Former American Airlines Flight Attendant Sentenced for Secret Bathroom Recordings

A former American Airlines flight attendant is sentenced to over 18 years in federal prison, for secretly recording young girls in airplane lavatories, on flights that he worked. 

38-year-old Estes Carter Thompson III of Charlotte, North Carolina, was arrested in January 2024 after a 14-year-old girl found his concealed recording setup on a toilet seat on a flight from Charlotte to Boston in September 2023. 

“Estes Carter Thompson thought he had a no-fail plan to sexually exploit children for his own gratification, until a brave 14-year-old girl thwarted his plan, and worked with us to put an end to his deviant behavior,” said Ted E. Docks, FBI Boston Division Special Agent in Charge Ted E. Docks. 

According to court documents, Thompson stuck his iPhone to the underside of the toilet seat before the girl went into the lavatory and set the phone's camera to record. After the victim exited, Thompson retrieved the phone. 

However, the minor noticed the behavior and reported it to her parents and other flight attendants. When confronted by the parents and flight attendants, Thompson locked himself in the lavatory and wiped the iPhone clean by restoring it to factory settings. 

Colonel Geoffrey Noble of the Massachusetts State Police stated, “When this disturbing incident came to our attention, Troopers assigned to Logan Airport took immediate action to ensure the safety of the victim and secure material evidence that became the basis of the federal case. Their diligence and proactive collaboration with FBI Boston stopped this individual from continuing a sustained pattern of child exploitation.”

Additional Incidents 

Investigators later discovered Thompson recorded young girls on four additional flights between January and August 2023 with the recordings uploaded to his iCloud account. Also found were over 50 images of a nine-year-old child who was an unaccompanied minor on a flight Thompson worked, including images of the minor’s face as she slept and images of the minor as she de-planed. There were also hundreds of AI-generated images of child-sexual abuse. 

Thompson pleaded guilty in March to one count of attempted sexual exploitation of children and one count of possession of child pornography depicting a prepubescent minor.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a DOJ-led nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.