A Southwest Airlines flight from Dallas to Burbank, California was proceeding normally last week when a passenger waiting to use the lavatory allegedly asked a flight attendant whether she wanted to see his genitals and then urinated in a corner of the aircraft.
Samson Hardridge, who is 33 or 34 years old, now faces a federal court charge of interference with flight crew members and attendants.
According to a complaint filed in US District Court, the trouble began when Mr Hardridge got up from his seat to use one of the plane’s restrooms, which were occupied. After a flight attendant asked him to wait in the aisle of the plane, the passenger asked the flight attendant whether he could expose himself to her.
After she declined, Mr Hardridge allegedly went to the galley door and began to urinate. Told this was not acceptable, Mr Hardridge became “very hostile,” yelling and verbally abusing the two flight attendants.
Shortly thereafter, due to Mr Hardridge’s erratic and threatening behaviour, the pilot decided to divert the plane to Albuquerque — nearly 800 miles from its intended destination on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
An escalation in abuse of flight attendants in the US has been an ongoing issue since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the FFA recording more incidences of abuse and harassment of flight attendants in 2021 than any previous year on record.
According to a survey conducted by the AFA-CWA and AFL-CIO last year, some 85 per cent of flight attendants said they dealt with unruly passengers in 2021, and nearly two in 10 said they’d been physically assaulted.
