Woman sues American Airlines over incident with drunk seatmate

On the way home from a guided culinary tour of Mexico with her friends, Gretchen Stelter settled into her window seat in American Airlines business class and began working on a book manuscript for her new job.

The 42-year-old editor, stressed about a fast-approaching deadline, said she hoped her open laptop and AirPods in her ears would deter the talkative passenger next to her. When her plan failed, Stelter said, she “gave up” on the work and made small talk with the man during the two-hour flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago.

But according to Stelter’s pending lawsuit, American Airlines employees failed to protect her from what happened next: Her seatmate, who had ordered two double vodka sodas, became “uncontrollably drunk and loudly sexually harassed her.” He also grabbed her buttocks when she tried to switch seats with a sympathetic passenger, the lawsuit says.

Stelter’s lawsuit, filed in Cook County in late May, also alleges that American Airlines employees “pilloried and blamed” her in the hours and days following the Oct. 29 ordeal.

A spokesman for the Fort Worth-based airline declined to comment Friday, citing pending litigation.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of PR problems for the airline.

According to federal authorities, a former American Airlines flight attendant attempted to film a 14-year-old girl using the bathroom last September. He also has footage of four other minors. Some of the girls’ families have sued the airline. The man pleaded not guilty last month to attempted child sexual abuse and possession of child pornography.

Also last month, three black men sued the airline for discriminatory conduct after they and other black passengers were temporarily banned from a January flight following a complaint of “offensive body odor.” In a June 18 letter to his employees, American Airlines CEO Robert Isom called the incident “unacceptable” and promised several actions to improve diversity and inclusion. Isom said he had also spoken with NAACP leaders who had threatened to issue a travel advisory against the airline.

In an interview with Tribune, Stelter said she had a long day of travel on Oct. 29 after spending a nine-day vacation in Mexico with several friends. She was traveling alone and began her trip at 6 a.m. in Oaxaca. Her itinerary included stops in Mexico City and Dallas-Fort Worth, where she boarded American Airlines Flight 1551 to O’Hare.

She planned to drive from Chicago to the home she shares with her husband in Madison, Wisconsin.

Stelter said she splurged on a business-class seat so she would have more room to work on the manuscript of a romantic fantasy series she was editing for her new job at a publishing company in Naperville. She said the man directly next to her in 3B – the aisle seat – ordered a double vodka soda and struck up a conversation.

“It was pretty obvious right away that he wanted to chat,” she said. “He just kept talking.”

Stelter said the conversation began quite innocently with chatter about her life, her travels and even the writings of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Her neighbor initially spoke coherently, Stelter said.

About an hour into the flight, the man ordered a refill of his drink, according to the lawsuit. Stelter, who had finished her soft drink, decided to order an alcoholic beverage as well, she said.

“He wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t behaving inappropriately from the start,” she said. “It definitely escalated as more alcohol was served to him.”

Stelter said she became increasingly uncomfortable as he complimented her on her appearance, complained about his girlfriend and said he wished the woman was more like her. Stelter, who was wearing her wedding ring, said she politely turned him down, telling the man she was “happily married.”

He called himself “stupid” and told himself to “shut up,” the lawsuit says, but he still did not deviate from his statement.

The lawsuit alleges that two flight attendants were nearby when the man made “vile, abusive and harassing remarks” toward Stelter. He said he would perform sexual acts on her, using vulgar language and saying he would “wear her out” and “f—–” her.)

Stelter said she repeatedly told him “no” and told him to stop talking and drinking.

“Honestly, I was trapped,” she told the Tribune. “I was in 3A. He was in 3B. The only way I could get out of that seat was to need help or climb over him, so he had full access to parts of my body that I didn’t want him to have access to.”

Other passengers noticed, including a man sitting directly in front of Stelter in 2A who called out to a flight attendant when he asked if Stelter was OK and she told him he was not, the lawsuit says. Her seatmate told the employee he was just “having fun,” and Stelter said the flight attendant “did not take any action to protect her.”

“He walked away, leaving the attacker with the alcohol that was still in his glass and the vodka bottle that was prominently displayed on his tray table,” the complaint states.

Stelter said the man’s harassing behavior continued throughout the flight. He told her they were “partying,” repeatedly touched her hair, tried to hold her hand and kiss her, the lawsuit says, and began spitting on the floor.

Stelter’s complaint claims that two flight attendants in the plane’s business class were very observant of the man’s behavior and did not help her, even though she complained that he was harassing and touching her and that he was getting sick. The lawsuit admits that they did indeed warn the man to stop touching other passengers; Stelter also mentioned in an interview that they gave him water and offered to help him use the bathroom.

Stelter felt cornered and tried to de-escalate the situation by approaching the man calmly but firmly, drawing on her experience from her part-time job at a crisis counseling center for rape victims.

“I think I was a little shocked that no one was helping me,” she said. “I just wanted to curl up and be as small as possible because I didn’t want to be touched anymore.”

Just before landing, the male passenger in 2A offered to switch seats. The lawsuit alleges that Stelter’s “attacker” grabbed her buttocks as she stepped over him to exit the row while the two flight attendants stood nearby. She said he continued to verbally harass her through the gap between the seats.

After landing at O’Hare, the lawsuit says, passengers were asked to remain seated while police removed the man from the plane after determining he was “too intoxicated to move safely.” Stelter said emergency personnel later removed him from the airport on a stretcher.

The lawsuit alleges that during a conversation immediately after the flight, airline employees “reprimanded and blamed” Stelter, suggesting she had not done enough to stop his behavior. The next day, she filed a complaint on American’s website. Four days after her flight, she received a “forms email response,” the lawsuit says. At her request, a customer service representative called her.

“After explaining that she had alerted American flight attendants to the attacker’s behavior and they had taken no action, the American customer service representative yelled at (Stelter) and blamed her for the incident, causing (her) to burst into tears,” the lawsuit states.

A few days later, Stelter said, a member of the airline’s management called and admitted that the previous employee had not handled the situation properly and promised that someone from the global investigation team would get in touch. She said that never happened.

Stelter said she contacted the FBI and signed a complaint against the drunk passenger. Her attorneys, Deanna Pihos and Benjamin Blustein, said they did not know if he was facing criminal charges or a civil penalty. His name is not mentioned in the complaint.

The Federal Aviation Administration reported a sharp increase in improper passenger conduct in 2021, leading to a zero-tolerance policy that replaced warning letters with fines. According to the FAA, there were 5,973 cases of improper passenger conduct this year. The number of incidents dropped to 2,455 in 2022, 2,075 in 2023 and 915 cases in 2024 through June 9, with 106 of those incidents related to alcohol consumption.

Last month, the FAA filed a federal lawsuit to collect a nearly $82,000 fine from a San Antonio woman who attempted to open an American Airlines cabin door during a flight in July 2021 and was eventually stopped with duct tape.

In January, a passenger on an American Airlines flight from Dallas-Fort Worth was accused of assaulting a flight attendant and later kicking a police officer. And in March, an intoxicated passenger on an American Airlines flight to Tampa was removed from the plane after being charged with threatening to “crash the plane.”

Stelter, once an avid traveller who has lived in Australia, got engaged in Paris and visited far-flung destinations such as London, Fiji, Ireland, New Zealand and Italy, said the ordeal has left her mostly crippled by anxiety, panic attacks and other emotional stress.

She accepted a voluntary demotion from her full-time position and was unable to fill her shifts as an on-call, part-time rape victim advocate, her lawsuit says.

“That’s one of the worst things about trauma,” she told the Tribune, “when it takes away something you love.”

Stelter said she plans to sue for damages and lost earnings and ask American Airlines to improve its employee training to better handle in-flight incidents and passenger complaints.

“I was re-traumatized at every turn instead of being listened to and supported,” she said. “It was just a complete failure to do anything to protect me or give me validation. If someone had said at some point, ‘I’m so sorry that happened to you,’ and then dealt with it that way from then on, it would be a very different situation.”

[email protected]