A lone female Delta Air Lines passenger says she was sexually assaulted by her drunken seatmate after gate agents allowed him to board the aircraft at Anchorage Airport despite noticing that he was intoxicated when he was checking in for the flight.
David Bryan Frantz was slurring his words when he showed up at the ticket counter, and gate agents believed he was intoxicated, so they told him to sober up by eating something and not having anything else to drink before the flight.
The gates agents also told Frantz not to drink any more alcohol, or he wouldn’t be allowed to travel, although that message doesn’t appear to have been passed on to the flight attendants.
The unnamed victim was traveling on Delta Air Lines flight 474 to Minneapolis on the evening of April 22 and had taken her seat in First Class when Frantz, who flight attendants working the flight described as intoxicated and obnoxious, took his seat next to her.
In fact, his behavior was so off that the flight attendants had only just served him a pre-departure alcoholic beverage when they decided to cut him off from any more alcohol during the five-hour flight to Minneapolis.
When Frantz was informed of this decision, however, he allegedly became verbally aggressive, and the flight attendants decided to have him removed from the plane before it was too late.
The same gate agent who checked the suspect in for the flight came onboard to escort him off, and by this point, he allegedly appeared even more intoxicated than when he first showed up for the flight.
It was only after Frantz had been removed from the plane and the flight was already in the air that the victim finally felt safe to come forward to the flight attendants and tell them she had been allegedly sexually assaulted by Frantz.
According to an affidavit filed in an Alaska court, Frantz allegedly told the victim that he was traveling to Orlando for sex and that he was “really good at oral sex and wanted to show her”.
The victim attempted to ignore Frantz by putting on her headphones, but a short time later, she says she suddenly felt him groping her left breast. The victim says she knocked his hand away and then moments later the flight attendants came over to tell Frantz that he was being cut off from alcohol.
Unaware of the allegations being made against Frantz, the gate agents in Anchorage had helped him by rebooking him onto a new flight that would depart the next day.
This gave the police the perfect opportunity to apprehend Frantz and he was swiftly taken into custody after he had passed through the TSA checkpoint at Anchorage. Police found him in an airport restaurant with what appeared to be an alcoholic beverage.
When questioned, Frantz told police that he could not remember what he said to the victim but denied the allegations of sexual assault. Frantz has been charged with interference with flight crew members and assault with intent to commit a felony.
Matt’s take
Airplanes are, perhaps wrongly, often seen as a safe space where everyone stays on their best behavior. The ever-increasing number of inflight criminal complaints, however, proves that this is most definitely an out-of-date assumption.
Last year, the FBI was even forced to issue an urgent warning to airline passengers over what the agency described as a ‘disturbing’ rise in inflight sexual assaults.
Back in 2017, the FBI investigated just 27 sexual misconduct cases aboard aircraft, but in 2022, the number of reported cases ballooned to 90. The sharp rise in cases has led to many airlines providing specific training to their flight attendants on how to deal with inflight sexual assaults – given the fact that many crews felt ill-equipped to support a victim.
Although victims are encouraged to speak up as soon as possible, investigators realize that it can be extremely difficult to call for help when they are sitting next to their attacker. The FBI says victims can come forward at any time to report a crime and should feel confident that prosecutors will take their allegations seriously.
It’s a “catch 22” here. How does an airline employee determine if a person is fit to fly? Whether intoxicated, ill, whatever, unless they are “certified” to determine this fitness. It’s all subjective. Agreed that the offender should be removed and charged, and, in this case, the airline did the right thing. The assaulting passenger is indeed “innocent until proven guilty” so the airline shouldn’t ban this person until guilt is confirmed or should the airline ban the assaulting passenger anyway? Where does the legal responsibility of the airline start or end? Is the airline complicit in this crime? I’m not a legal professional so I don’t know.