Flight Attendant Who Filmed Girls in Airplane Bathroom with Hidden Phone Sentenced to 18.5 Years

A flight attendant accused of taping his phone to the airplane toilet’s lid to film young girls has been sentenced to 18 and a half years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release.

Former American Airlines flight attendant Estes Carter Thompson III was arrested and charged with one count of attempted sexual exploitation of children and one count of possession of child pornography depicting a prepubescent minor in 2024. He was arrested in Lynchburg, Va., in January 2024, and plead guilty to the charges in March. He was sentenced in Boston on Wednesday, July 23.

Police alleged he had recordings of a 14-year-old and four other girls ages 7, 9, 11, and 14, that were recorded over a nine-month period, The Associated Press reports. AI-generated child sexual abuse images and more than 50 images of a 9-year-old girl who was flying as an unaccompanied minor were also discovered on his iCloud account, Boston.com reports. 

His setup, which involved concealing his iPhone beneath a warning sticker that read “seat broken” on the plane’s toilet, was discovered by a 14-year-old girl on a flight bound for Boston on Sept. 2, 2023. She snapped a photo of the setup and showed her father, who confronted Thompson.

Boston U.S. District Court Judge Julia Kobick called his behavior “appalling” and said child victims’ “innocence has been lost” because of his actions. Thompson apologized in court Wednesday, describing his actions as “selfish, perverse and wrong.”

Thompson, 37, a resident of Charlotte, N.C., was arrested in 2024 after authorities said a 14-year-old girl on his flight discovered his secret recording setup in the bathroom. “We take these allegations very seriously. They do not reflect our airline or our core mission of caring for people,” the airline said in a statement at the time, per NBC News.

Thompson will serve his sentence at FMC Butner in North Carolina and intends to undergo sex offender-specific treatment, the outlet reports.

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American Airlines still faces a civil lawsuit in Texas from the family of one of Thompson’s victims. Paul Llewellyn, whose law firm Lewis & Llewellyn is representing the child’s family, told Boston.com: “We are pleased that the perpetrator has been sentenced to a lengthy prison term so that he can no longer prey on young girls.”

Llewellyn’s statement continued, “But no family should ever have to endure what these families have gone through.”