Randi Zuckerberg criticizes Alaska Airlines for letting drunk passenger harass her mid-flight
Randi Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of Zuckerberg Media, called out Alaska Airlines on Twitter Wednesday evening for allowing a drunken passenger to make “explicit, lewd, and highly sexual comments” to her during a flight from Los Angeles to Mexico.
On Twitter, Zuckerberg posted the letter she wrote to Alaska Airlines’ leadership team detailing the experience. In the letter, she explains that the passenger began talking about touching himself, commenting on women’s bodies and asking her if she fantasized about a female business colleague she was traveling with.
When she brought his behavior to the attention of the flight attendants, they responded by telling her that he's a frequent Alaska Airlines traveler and that she shouldn’t take his comments personally.
Feeling disgusted & degraded after an @AlaskaAir flight where the passenger next to me made repeated lewd sexual remarks. The flight attendants told me he was a frequent flier, brushed off his behavior & kept giving him drinks. I guess his $ means more than our safety? My letter: pic.twitter.com/xOkDpb0dYU
— Randi Zuckerberg (@randizuckerberg) November 30, 2017
After telling them that his behavior was making her “extremely uncomfortable,” the flight staff told her that they could reseat her in the back of the plane. Zuckerberg said that she almost moved until she realized that he should be the one that has to move, not her.
“I am the one that is being harassed! By a traveler who has a KNOWN history by these very flight attendants of being inappropriate and offensive in the past,” she wrote. “All of this happened before the plane took off…why is it the woman that needs to switch seats in this situation? Shouldn’t he have been thrown off the plane?”
Zuckerberg said that she stayed in her seat for the remainder of the flight while the passenger continued to drink “multiple alcoholic beverages” and make inappropriate comments. She concluded her letter by stating that she is “furious” with Alaska Airlines for “being more concerned with taking his money than for the safety and security of the other passengers around him.”
In a subsequent tweet, Zuckerberg said that she’d spoken with two Alaska Airlines executives and that the company is “conducting an investigation and have temporarily suspended this passenger’s travel privileges.”
UPDATE: I just got off the phone with two executives from @AlaskaAir who informed me that they are conducting an investigation and have temporarily suspended this passenger’s travel privileges. Thank you for taking this seriously.
— Randi Zuckerberg (@randizuckerberg) November 30, 2017