A 40-year-old British man was arrested at London Heathrow Airport after being accused of sexually assaulting a woman in the first-class cabin of a United Airlines plane.
The alleged victim, also from London, claims she was attacked while the other passengers slept. The overnight flight departed from Newark, in the United States, to London, England.
According to The Sun, the passenger reported the case to the United Airlines flight crew saying that a man forced her to have sex with him.
Then, United’s employees called the London police and reported the crime. Police officers entered the plane to arrest the suspect man as soon as the aircraft landed in Terminal 2 of the airport, on January 31st.
The woman, who is also in her 40s, was taken by police to a counseling center. She was heard by police officers specializing in rape cases.
Officers searched the luxury cabin while the man was taken into custody at Heathrow Police Station.
Fingerprints, identification photo of the suspicious man and DNA samples were taken. The man was later released. The investigation of the man accused of sexually assaulting a woman is ongoing.
According to the newspaper, sources said the two people were sitting in different rows in the cabin, in which return-flight tickets cost as much as $4,088. The sources also said that prior to their flight, they met in the lounge in Newark.
‘The parties were apparently unknown to each other beforehand but had apparently been seen talking to each other and drinking during the flight,’ the source told The Sun.
United did not respond to Travel Noire’s request to confirm this detail.
In 2018, The Washington Post reported that the FBI was warning about the spike in the number of sexual assaults reported on commercial flights.
According to the Post, the assaults, which typically occur on long overnight flights, have been increasing every year . . . “at an alarming rate,” David Rodski, an FBI special agent assigned to investigate crimes out of Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, told the Post.
In 2020, The U.S. Department of Transportation established the National In-Flight Sexual Misconduct Task Force (Task Force) in order to improve guidance and training for airline personnel to respond to such incidents.
In addition to training to help safeguard passengers, flight attendants will learn how to protect themselves.