An American Airlines flight attendant pleaded guilty Thursday to using a hidden iPhone to record underage girls in airplane lavatories and collecting a massive trove of child pornography.
Estes Carter Thompson III, 37, faces up to 20 years in prison for child exploitation after he was caught trying to secretly film a 14-year-old passenger with an iPhone taped to a toilet seat, The Boston Globe reported.
Investigators later found secret bathroom videos of girls aged 7, 9, 11, and 14 in Thompson’s iCloud account taken on different flights in 2023 — plus a hoard of kiddie porn generated using AI.
Thompson was busted in September 2023 on a Boston-bound flight after he escorted a 14-year-old passenger to the lavatory, but asked to enter first to wash his hands, mentioning that the toilet seat was “broken,” prosecutors told the US District Court in Boston.
The girl then found an iPhone haphazardly concealed under red maintenance stickers on the underside of the toilet seat. She took photos of the hidden camera, returned to her seat, and showed them to her parents.
When the girl’s father confronted Thompson, he locked himself in the lavatory and restored his phone to factory settings, prosecutors said.
Investigators later found more red stickers in his suitcase, and a search of his iCloud account revealed more recordings of four other underage girls, photos of an unaccompanied 9-year-old asleep in her seat, and a trove of hundreds of sexually explicit, AI-generated images involving children, prosecutors told The Globe.
“All minor victims involved in this matter have been identified and their families have been contacted by law enforcement,” prosecutors told the court.
Thompson, who is from Charlotte, NC, pleaded guilty to charges of attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of child pornography depicting a prepubescent minor.
Those crimes carry maximum sentences of 30 and 20 years, respectively, although with the plea deal, prosecutors will likely seek a sentence of 15-20 years behind bars.
“I expect the defense will seek a 15-year sentence,” Thompson’s federal public defender, Scott Lauer, told the Globe in a statement.
In addition to the jail time, Thompson could be forced to pay $250,000 in damages.
The families of two victims have filed suits against American Airlines for allowing their employees to prey on the girls.
The family of the girl who caught Thompson in the act accused the airline of negligence for not confiscating the employee’s phone after the girl’s father notified airline staff, allowing him to destroy evidence.
The family of a 9-year-old victim who Thompson secretly recorded in January, 2023, also sued American Airlines, but the airline initially tried to blame the girl for using a lavatory “she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”
American Airlines later apologized for the response and fired the legal team behind it.
“We do not believe this child is at fault and we take the allegations involving a former team member very seriously,” the airline told The Post last May.
