A 53-year-old man has been arrested after he allegedly tried to secretly video record up a flight attendant’s skirt on a Cathay Pacific flight from Nagoya, Japan, to Hong Kong on Monday afternoon.
Cathay Pacific flight CX-563 departed Nagoya around three hours late on September 8 for the 2,626km flight to Hong Kong aboard an Airbus A321 single-aisle jet.
During the flight, a witness reportedly told the cabin crew that they had seen the suspect try to film up their skirts. As soon as the flight landed in Hong Kong, police were waiting for the plane and immediately took the man into custody, local media reported.
The Hong Kong Police Force confirmed that the suspect had been arrested on suspicion of the unlawful recording of intimate parts.
Commonly referred to as ‘upskirting,’ the crime of taking photos or videos in a public place of a woman’s intimate parts without their consent has become a significant social issue in Japan.
Legally, upskirting only became a criminal offense at a national level in Japan in 2023 after the government was urged to take a tougher stance on the behavior.
Upskirting typically occurs on crowded public transport, and mobile phones sold in Japan are required to make a camera shutter sound when a photo is taken, even if the phone is set to silent.
Some perpetrators have tried to skirt the rules by covering their phone speaker, while there has also been a rise in shady apps that allow users to take photos and videos without the shutter sound activating.
While upskirting crimes commonly take place on busy subway trains, there have been reported incidents on airplanes.
In December 2023, a video went viral on social media after a male passenger was caught in the act, apparently trying to upskirt a flight attendant on an undisclosed Asian airline as the crew member was facing backwards while serving meals.
The video emerged just a month after a male Aeromexico flight attendant was caught allegedly upskirting a female passenger while boarding a plane at Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport.
The flight attendant was kneeling down and apparently completing duties in the galley, although his mobile phone, with the camera facing upwards, appeared to be pointed towards the skirt of the young female passenger.
Aeromexico denounced the incident and said that “no inappropriate conduct” would be allowed on its planes.
