Spanish police in Mallorca managed to track down a tourist at a local hotel after a flight attendant reported that she had been sexually assaulted as she said goodbye to passengers at the boarding door of a plane that had just arrived in Palma de Mallorca from Munich, Germany.
According to Spain’s national police force, the Guardia Civil, the 44-year-old perpetrator from Austria, was flying to Mallorca with a group of friends and had been disruptive throughout the two-hour flight to the popular Spanish island in the Balearics.
After the plane landed, however, the man allegedly tried to hug the flight attendant as she said goodbye to passengers. The victim told the man not to touch her, but he ignored her request and forcefully hugged her before trying to kiss her without her consent.
The perpetrator then deplaned as normal and headed out of the airport, as other passengers and crew members rushed to the victim’s aid.
The Guardia Civil was called, and after finding out his seat number and name from the passenger manifest, they were able to pull closed-circuit surveillance video from inside the airport and show this to the victim to get a positive identification of the suspect.
Officers then used this information to trace the perpetrator to a local hotel, and officers were dispatched to take the man into custody.
Although the incident occurred on June 3, it is only now coming to light after the man appeared in court, where he pleaded guilty to sexual assault. The man was slapped with a fine of €360 and ordered to leave Mallorca.
Mallorca is one of several Spanish destinations that deal with a significant number of unruly passenger incidents, which are often fueled by pre-flight binge drinking in the airport.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has repeatedly called on airports to limit the number of drinks that passengers can consume before boarding a flight, saying that disruptive passenger behavior was leading to the airline diverting one flight per day on average.
O’Leary would like to see airports impose a two-drink limit to stop passengers ‘pre-gaming’ flights, especially on services to hotspot destinations like Ibiza and Mallorca.
