A 23-year-old flight attendant who is saving her virginity for marriage says she was sexually harassed by two pilots when she started working for the wholly-owned regional subsidiary of Alaska Airlines.
The flight attendant, who has only been identified by the initials J.B. in a lawsuit recently filed in an Oregon district court, started working for Horizon Air in July 2023 but just two months later, she claims she was “repeatedly and severely harassed” by the two pilots.
The lawsuit includes reams of text and Snapchat conversations between the flight attendant and the pilots in which the two men sent unwanted messages about “masturbation, fellatio, and cunnilingus.”
When the flight attendant approached her bosses at Horizon Air about the pilots’ behavior, however, the lawsuit claims that the airline turned a blind eye to her allegations and even “insinuated that plaintiff was at fault for allegedly encouraging the inappropriate behavior.”
Without any intervention from Horizon Air’s human resources department, J.B. says the behavior continued unchecked, and by February 2024, she had started to suffer panic attacks due to what she describes as a “hostile work environment.”
The harassment is believed to have started innocently enough, with the flight attendant exchanging messages with the pilots, although she repeatedly reminded them that she was celibate and only wanted to be friends.
After one flight, however, one of the pilots allegedly “lured” the young flight attendant into his hotel room and subjected her to a sexual assault, which included unwanted kissing and touching.
J.B. asked to have her duties changed to avoid working with the pilots, but Horizon Air reportedly refused to honor her request because crew members’ schedules are based solely on seniority.
By March of this year, the alleged sexual harassment had gotten so bad that J.B. says she was forced to take a leave of absence. At the same time, J.B. reported the unwanted behavior to the police, although the pilots are believed to be actively still flying for Horizon Air.
In one text message conversation between one of the pilots, an innocent exchange about eating seafood suddenly took a turn when the pilot replied: “You can do anything you put your mind to… You can eat ass if you’re wild enough.”
The messages continued: “You gotta watch more adult videos on the internet… You’ll learn bad habits but also what people can do with enough motivation lol.”
And in an exchange of messages on Snapchat with another pilot, J.B. repeatedly declined the crew member’s advances. “Can I see you,” the pilot wrote. “I don’t feel comfortable doing that I’m sorry,” J.B. responded. “I want to see you. You’re so hot,” the pilot replied.
“I’m not sending you nudes, I already told you that,” J.B. wrote back. The pilot responded: “Just a little I just want to see your books, it’s not like I haven’t seem them before.”
In her lawsuit against Horizon Air, the flight attendant is accusing the airline of violating an Oregon anti-discrimination law by subjecting her to a “sexually hostile work environment because she was female.”
If J.B. were to win the suit at trial, Alaska Air could be forced to pay the flight attendant up to $50 million in punitive damages or 1% of its net worth.
