Cabin crewman cleared in criminal court but still sacked by employer for alleged sexual misconduct
British Airways unfairly dismissed a long‑serving cabin crew member accused of masturbating in a Heathrow crew rest facility, an Employment Tribunal has ruled, finding that managers relied on a flawed investigation and an unreasonable assessment of the evidence despite his earlier criminal acquittal.
In a decision issued in January, the tribunal concluded that the airline did not act within the range of reasonable responses when it dismissed the claimant for alleged sexual misconduct and reputational damage, despite his acquittal in criminal proceedings.
The case arose from an incident in August 2023 at the Crew Report Centre at London Heathrow airport, where a female colleague, anonymised as X, believed she had seen the claimant masturbating on a neighbouring bed in a dimly lit rest room.
X later reported the incident, but the cabin crew member consistently denied any inappropriate behaviour, maintaining that X had misinterpreted what she thought she had seen and heard.
He was arrested in September 2023 and charged with indecent exposure.
Acquitted of charges
However, at a magistrates' court trial in November 2023, he was acquitted.
According to the tribunal's summary of that hearing, the magistrates took into account the body‑worn camera footage of the location, the lighting, and that the partitions had blankets covering and restricted visibility.
It also took into account that there were others in the room who did not see or hear what X said she did.
"They found that the identity of the Claimant was not disputed. They said that the Claimant's evidence in court corroborated with this interview. They concluded that he was not guilty of the offence," the tribunal's summary read.
Employee still dismissed
Despite this, British Airways resumed its internal investigation and ultimately dismissed the claimant in April 2024.
The disciplinary manager accepted X's account, relying heavily on her evident distress and contemporaneous text messages to a friend as indicators of truthfulness.
The tribunal found that this approach placed undue weight on X's emotional reaction and failed to test her credibility against the wider evidence.
The judgment is particularly critical of the way the airline understood and mischaracterised the claimant's defence.
The tribunal noted that "the Claimant and [his union representative] repeatedly and consistently said that they did not controvert that X believed what she thought she saw, but that they considered it to be a mistake."
Error in probe
Instead of treating this as a claim of misinterpretation, the investigation effectively recast it as an argument about mistaken identity, even though "there is no dispute it was [the Claimant] in the room that night, next to her."
This error, the tribunal found, distorted the whole investigation. Management spent time "confirming" that the claimant was present, which was never in doubt, instead of asking whether X could actually have seen what she said she saw in that environment.
The tribunal stressed that the disciplinary manager "failed to take into account evidence which was before her – the darkness of the room, the lack of other witnesses, the consistency of the Claimant's version of events. The independent witness who did not support X version."
Failure on proper engagement
The tribunal was also critical of the airline's failure to properly engage with the outcome of the criminal case.
It observed that X had been inconsistent about a number of points and that she had not been believed by the Magistrates, not just to the extent of not satisfying the standard of proof to a criminal level but to the point where the Magistrates commented that they did not consider the incident had happened.
"This ought to have been at least a flag to the investigators and disciplinary officers of the Respondent, but instead they chose to believe X because she was upset," the tribunal said.
Internal appeals did not repair these flaws. The first‑stage appeal manager repeated the same misunderstanding of the claimant's position and continued to treat the impact on X as a sufficient basis to uphold the dismissal.
A second‑stage appeal involved further interviews, but the tribunal said the respondent did not consider the evidence in its entirety and continued to overlook key contextual factors, including an independent witness's original account of the room and its lighting.
Ultimately, the tribunal held that "there was no definitive basis on which the Respondent could decide whether the Claimant was guilty of this offence."
"They had to consider who, on a balance of probabilities they believed," the tribunal said.
On that question, the airline's approach fell short.
"The Tribunal therefore concluded that the Claimant had been unfairly dismissed as the belief of [the disciplinary manager] was not reasonable and her decision was unsafe. The further appeal processes have not rectified those mistakes," it ruled.
