A former American Airlines flight attendant who admitted hiding his cellphone inside airplane toilets to secretly record girls was sentenced Wednesday to 18.5 years in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release.
U.S. District Judge Julia E. Kobick called the conduct of Estes Carter Thompson III, 38, “appalling” and told the court the five victims’ “innocence has been lost”.
Speaking briefly before sentencing, Thompson apologized, describing his actions as “selfish, perverse and wrong”.
He will serve his time at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, where his attorneys say he plans to undergo sex-offender treatment.
Authorities say the scheme unraveled on Sept. 2, 2023, during a flight from Charlotte to Boston when a 14-year-old passenger discovered an iPhone taped under the toilet-seat lid with bright red “INOPERATIVE EQUIPMENT” stickers, while its camera was recording and its flashlight was lit.
The girl told her parents, who then reported the incident to the other flight attendants on board. When confronted by the girl’s father and other flight staff, Thompson locked himself in the toilet with his iPhone and restored the device to factory settings, which wiped all content from the phone, before the plane landed at Logan International Airport.
Massachusetts State Police found 11 matching red stickers in Thompson’s luggage at the gate. A search of his iCloud account uncovered four earlier recordings of girls ages 6, 9, 11, and 14 using lavatories on flights between January and August 2023, as well as hundreds of AI-generated child-sexual-abuse images.
“Mr. Thompson took advantage of his position of trust as a flight attendant to exploit innocent children,” U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley said in a statement. “It is our hope that this sentence provides at least some space for the victims and their families to heal”.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Ted E. Docks credited the teenager who spoke up for stopping “a sustained pattern of child exploitation.”
The case began in Lynchburg, Virginia, where Thompson was arrested in January 2024 after the Boston investigation was transferred.
Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide Justice Department initiative launched in 2006 to combat child sexual exploitation, assisted in the multi-agency investigation.
Thompson’s sentence falls just shy of the 20-year maximum. After prison, he must register as a sex offender and will be barred from unsupervised contact with minors during supervised release.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
