An ex-American Airlines flight attendant who pleaded guilty to secretly filming young girls in airplane bathrooms has been sentenced to 18 and a half years in a federal prison following a hearing in a Boston courthouse on Thursday.
Estes Carter Thompson III of Charlotte reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in March and had faced a minimum sentence of at least 15 years in prison. Thompson had also faced a maximum possible fine of $250,000, but was ordered to pay just $200 as a special assessment.
The ex-flight attendant could, however, have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in restitution to five of his victims, although the amount he will be ordered to pay each child has been deferred until October.
The 36-year-old has been held in custody since January 2024, when he was arrested on suspicion of hiding his iPhone in the lavatory of an American Airlines airplane in an attempt to capture intimate video of a young girl.
The incident leading to Thompson’s arrest occurred on September 2, 2023, when he was working on a flight from Charlotte to Boston.
During the flight, Thompson approached a 14-year-old passenger who had been in a line of people waiting to use the bathroom at the back of the plane. Thompson offered to let the victim use the First Class bathroom and led her to he front of the plane.
Before letting her inside, he said he had to first wash his hands and entered he bathroom for a short period with the door shut. When the victim entered the bathroom, she found a large ‘defective catering equipment’ sticker taped to the lavatory seat.
The girl was suspicious of the sticker and took a closer look at it. Concealed underneath the sticker was an iPhone with the camera peeping out.
The victim took a photo for evidence and immediately told her parents what had happened. Her father confronted Thompson, who then hid in the bathroom even as the plane was coming into land.
Prosecutors believe that Thompson used this time to reset his phone to factory settings in a desperate bid to wipe any incriminating evidence.
Forensic experts were, however, able to access Thompson’s iCloud storage, where a trove of evidence was recovered, including photos depicting victims aged just seven, nine, 11, and 14 using an airplane bathroom.
There were also more than 50 photos of a nine-year-old unaccompanied minor recovered from the same iCloud account.
When he is eventually released from prison, Thompson will be on supervised release for a further five years and will be placed on the sex offenders register. During his time, Thompson will be banned from drinking alcohol, will be required to take as many as 104 substance abuse tests per year, and will take regular polygraph tests.
In a memorandum provided to the court prior to Thompson’s sentencing, prosecutors said Thompson had:
“… taken advantage of his position of trust as a flight attendant to select among the passengers on his flights innocent children who he could exploit, directing them to an aircraft bathroom that he had set up as a secret recording studio, recording videos of the children’s bodies in one of their most private moments, and then storing, editing, and revisiting those videos, all for his own sexual gratification.”
“In so doing, he robbed five young girls of their innocence and belief in the goodness of the world and the people they would encounter in it, instead leaving them with fear, mistrust, insecurity, and sadness.”
