Sexual Misconduct on Airlines Gets Its #MeToo Moment—or Does It?
Congress created a task force to confront the industry’s harassment problem, but advocates worry it’s tilted in favor of management.
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From Southwest’s “hostesses” in the 1970s to Hooters Air to the Vietnamese budget carrier whose flight attendants were made to wear bikinis, airlines have a long history of sexualizing the role of flight attendants.
Their victimization continues to this day. More than a third of flight attendants said they had experienced sexual harassment over the past year, with almost one in five suffering physical assaults such as touching or groping, according to a 2018 survey of 3,500 attendants by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) union.