Most people understand that taking photos or videos of strangers without their consent is invasive and inappropriate. Yet service workers, particularly those in confined spaces like airplanes, regularly face this exact violation.
One Arizona flight attendant shared her frustration after discovering yet another passenger photographing her while she worked. Her video sparked a conversation about workplace safety, consent, and the unique challenges of confronting harassment at 30,000 feet.
Flight Attendant Catches Passenger Photographing Her
Flight attendant Danika (@flywithdanika) recounted a recent incident that left her feeling violated and uncomfortable at work. Her video has more than 4,500 views.
While working first class on a flight, she was serving pre-departure beverages and preparing for the safety demonstration when she noticed a male passenger holding his phone up in a suspicious way.
“They think that they’re so sneaky. But being in a generation that was raised around phones, we know when the camera’s pointed at us,” she explains in the video.
Her suspicions were confirmed during the safety demo. Flight attendants first perform the demonstration in front of first class and then walk through the main cabin.
“As I’m walking, I turn and look and see a picture of me on his phone. Like, it’s big on his phone,” Danika says.
What made the situation even more uncomfortable was what she saw next. As she continued the safety demo and glanced at his screen again, she says she discovered he’d texted the photo to a friend.
“Of course the font is like size 50 because he’s old. Surprise, surprise. And he had texted the picture to his friend. And there was an exchange of messages that I could see,” she says.
“It just makes me so uncomfortable,” Danika says. “I’m in a workplace. Like, I don’t, maybe people think that it’s flattering, but it’s not. Because I really like to provide a good service. And now, at this point, I just feel even uncomfortable.”
Did She Confront Him?
Danika reveals this wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s happened multiple times during her career. And she’s still searching for the right way to handle it.
“This has happened enough times now that I am just trying to figure out the best way to handle these kinds of situations,” she says, noting that it typically occurs when she’s working first class.
The unwanted photography affects her ability to do her job well.
“I like to introduce myself; I like to be really personable. I like to talk to the passengers. But when you’re taking photos of me in, like, compromising situations, it’s really uncomfortable,” she explains. “Now I just don’t feel comfortable in the workplace.”
The confined nature of air travel creates a unique predicament that doesn’t exist in other service environments.
Stuck 35,000 Feet In The Air
“It’s not like a bar or some kind of establishment where you can just, like, say, ‘Hey, get out of here.’ We’re stuck on a plane,” Danika points out.
While pilots and other crew members have offered to intervene on her behalf each time this has happened, Danika worries about the aftermath of confrontation.
“If I confront them and ask them to delete it, now I have the next two hours where I have to still be serving them drinks or in a close proximity. And so it’s just, I don’t know, creates an uncomfortable situation for me,” she says.
She’s torn between wanting the photos deleted and avoiding confrontation that could make the rest of the flight even more awkward.
“I don’t want them to still have those photos of me on their phone. But I also don’t know that I want to confront them about it,” she admits.
Despite her uncertainty about the best approach, Danika made her position clear. She says, “I feel like I should—I deserve to feel comfortable at work and be able to do my job without people being creepy and weird.”
The Scope Of Harassment In The Skies
Danika’s experience with unwanted photography is part of a much larger problem affecting flight attendants across the industry.
A survey by the Association of Flight Attendants found that nearly one in five flight attendants say they’ve been sexually assaulted. And 70% report experiencing sexual harassment in the air, NPR reported. About one in five have witnessed a passenger being sexually assaulted or had an assault reported to them.
The FBI reports that sexual assaults on commercial airline flights are on the rise, from 38 incidents in 2014 to 63 in 2017.
These numbers likely underrepresent the true scope of the problem. Sexual assaults are vastly underreported generally. They may be even more underreported on planes.
What Other Flight Attendants Say
Flight attendants told NPR they receive thorough training for emergencies ranging from babies being born to deaths on board, from potential terrorist attacks to sudden cabin depressurization. But there’s almost no training for incidents that are actually much more common—sexual misconduct and assault.
One flight attendant interviewed said she’d never been formally trained to deal with a passenger inappropriately touching himself in front of children on a flight.
“We’re asking flight attendants who have been survivors of this for decades to suddenly be the enforcers on the plane,” Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, told NPR, “when we haven’t set a standard of having this be something that is not tolerated by the airlines themselves.”
The problem extends beyond sexual misconduct. A 2021 AFA survey of nearly 5,000 flight attendants found that 71% of flight attendants who filed incident reports with airline management received no follow-up. And a majority did not observe efforts by their employers to address the rise in unruly passengers.
“We tell them that it is a federal offense to not comply with crew member instructions…and then the plane is met by airline supervisors or airport law enforcement and the passenger gets a slap on the wrist and sent on their way,” a flight attendant wrote in the survey.
@flywithdanika How would you handle this? :/ #flightattendant #cabincrew #advice #flightattendantlife #aviation
Commenters React
“It’s disgusting:/ and completely unnecessary,” a top comment read.
“(Former FA here) This is totally understandable it’s a VIOLATION There’s a law that passengers cannot TOUCH flight crew – I wish there was a protection in place where there’s no filming allowed on flights as well…” a person said.
“Baby if you don’t walk up to them and tell them they’re not allowed to film you while doing your job. I’ve had to do it a few times,” another wrote.
“The size 50 font is sending me,” a commenter joked.