A former flight attendant has been charged in the US for allegedly attempting to secretly take video footage of a 14-year-old girl in an aeroplane toilet.
The incident took place last September on a flight from Charlotte in North Carolina to Boston in Massachusetts, the public prosecutor's office announced on Friday.
The 36-year-old had lured the girl to the toilet in the first class of the aircraft, where he is said to have hidden his smartphone. However, the alleged victim discovered it, took a photo of it and informed her parents.
They then informed the crew and an investigation was launched immediately after landing.
The man was reportedly detained in January 2024 and has been in custody since then. Investigators found recordings of four other underage female passengers on his smartphone.
According to the public prosecutor's office, these were apparently from flights on which he had previously worked. The victims were between seven and 14 years old at the time of the offence.
In addition, further recordings of a nine-year-old were discovered in the accused's cloud storage as well as hundreds of child pornographic contents created with artificial intelligence (AI).
If convicted, the defendant faces between 15 and 30 years in prison. According to US media, the airline reported that the man had been suspended from duty immediately after the incident in September, and had not been allowed to return to work.