Alaska Airlines investigates sexual harassment claim made by ex-Facebook executive
LOS ANGELES -- Media executive Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, says she was harassed by a fellow passenger on an Alaska Airlines flight traveling from Los Angeles to Mazatlan, Mexico, CBS Los Angeles reports.
In a Facebook post, Randi Zuckerberg said the man sitting next to her in First Class repeatedly made "explicit, lewd and highly offensive sexual comments."
When she complained to flight attendants, she says they told her she shouldn't take it personally, and offered to move her seat, rather than her alleged harasser.
"He started talking to me about touching himself, kept asking me if I fantasized about the female business colleague I was traveling with, rated and commented on the women's bodies boarding the aircraft as they walked by us, and many more equally horrifying and offensive comments," Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, which she sent to Alaska Airlines executives.
Flight attendants told Zuckerberg the passenger was a frequent flyer with the airline, and while they have had to talk to him about his behavior in the past, she shouldn't take it personally because he "just doesn't have a filter."
But Zuckerberg told the flight attendants that she was extremely uncomfortable, and they suggested she could move to a middle seat at the very back of the plane.
"Which I almost did until I realized…why should I have to move? 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.
She said all of this transpired before the plane took off. It remains unclear why the passenger was not removed from the flight.
Zuckerberg said she watched the passenger drink several alcoholic beverages as he continued to make inappropriate and offensive comments.
"Ironically, one of those comments about all the recent sexual harassment cases in the media, and how 'these Millennial women just aren't willing to give some booty to get a job anymore,'" she recalled.
Zuckerberg says Alaska Airlines executives have since called her to say that they are conducting an investigation and have temporarily suspended the passenger's travel privileges.
"While it should never have happened in the first place, I am thankful that they are taking the situation seriously," she wrote in an update to her original Facebook post.
