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A former American Airlines flight attendant who prosecutors said “took advantage of his position of trust” to secretly record and “exploit” innocent young girls in airplane bathrooms was sentenced in Boston federal court Wednesday.
Estes Carter Thompson III, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 and a half years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, according to court documents.
In a sentencing memo, federal prosecutors described how Thomspon targeted unaccompanied minors and lured them to bathrooms he rigged with a hidden camera “for his own sexual gratification.”
“Estes Carter Thompson III took 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,” the memo said. “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.”
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An iPhone is taped to the back of a toilet seat on an American Airlines flight from Charlotte, N.C., to Boston, on Sep. 2, 2023. (Lewis & Llewellyn LLP via AP, File)
Thompson, who was indicted in April 2024, pleaded guilty on March 6, 2025, to charges of attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of child pornography depicting a prepubescent minor.
The case began when a 14-year-old girl on one of Thompson’s flights to Boston discovered a cellphone taped to the lid of a lavatory toilet in September 2023. Authorities later alleged that Thompson had filmed at least four other girls — between the ages of 7 and 14 — using airplane bathrooms over a nine-month span in 2023.
U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick called his actions “appalling” and said the child victims had lost their “innocence” because of what he did, according to the Associated Press.
At his sentencing hearing Wednesday, Thompson apologized and described his actions as “selfish, perverse and wrong.”
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Estes Carter Thompson III is accused of recording minors in the bathroom of airplanes on which he worked. (Lynchburg Detention Center)
A lawyer representing the victims’ families, Paul Llewellyn, praised the outcome and criticized American Airlines’ handling of the situation in a statement to Fox News Digital on Thursday.
“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 said.
“But no family should ever have to endure what these families have gone through,” he added. “It’s deeply troubling that an American Airlines employee was able to exploit his position in such a calculated and invasive way. American Airlines owes these families – and the public – answers and meaningful reforms to ensure this can never happen again.”
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A lawyer representing the victims’ families, Paul Llewellyn, praised the outcome of Estes Carter Thompson III’s sentencing. (KDFW)
American Airlines previously apologized after the company’s “outside counsel” appeared to blame one of the victims in a prior court filing, evoking outrage from the lawyer representing the victims. The filing said the girl “knew or should have known” that the lavatory “contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”
According to a civil lawsuit, the girl took a photo of the phone taped to the toilet seat and showed it to her parents back at their seats. Her father then made a beeline for the plane’s flight attendants with the photo and yelled, “What the hell just happened in the first-class bathroom with my daughter?”
American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital on Thursday.
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Thompson will serve his sentence at FMC Butner in North Carolina and intends to undergo both sex offender-specific treatment and substance abuse treatment, according to the sentencing memo.
His attorney, Scott Lauer, declined to comment to Fox News Digital on Thursday.
Fox News’ Chris Eberhart and the Associated Press contributed to this story.