Lawsuit alleges carrier took no action after April 2024 police contact despite 2020 settlement
A United Airlines flight attendant claims the carrier failed to stop a pilot from distributing her intimate images despite prior warnings.
Lisa Denson has sued United Airlines in Colorado federal court, painting a disturbing picture of corporate indifference that allegedly allowed a pilot to sexually exploit her for seven years despite the airline's prior experience with nearly identical allegations.
The lawsuit, filed October 28, comes on the heels of pilot Andrew Hill's October 2024 guilty plea to eight felony counts of distributing pornography, plus convictions for sexual extortion and stalking. But Denson's legal action targets her employer, not Hill, arguing the airline had multiple opportunities to intervene and chose not to.
The allegations trace a troubling pattern. Denson and Hill met in 2016 when she worked a flight he was piloting. They began dating, though the suit notes United had no policy governing workplace romances. Over the next five years, Hill allegedly used company-paid hotel rooms during flight layovers to secretly photograph and record Denson, sometimes capturing her undressing out of her United uniform, without her knowledge or consent.
In 2017, Denson says she discovered Hill had been posting intimate images and videos of her on Reddit under the username "TinkGoneWild." She confronted him. He promised to stop and remove everything. She believed him, and they stayed together until 2021.
What makes the allegations particularly damaging for United is the history. Just two years before Denson and Hill met, another United pilot was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for similar conduct involving a different flight attendant. That pilot remained on United's payroll well into 2016 and retired with full benefits.
In 2018, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued United over that earlier incident. The case ended in a 2020 consent decree requiring the airline to pay $321,000 and overhaul its harassment policies to explicitly cover online conduct. United also had to notify employees of their rights under federal discrimination law.
Yet when Utah police began investigating Hill in early 2024, United's response was allegedly silence. In April, investigators served a search warrant on the airline seeking Hill's personnel file as evidence in a criminal probe. A detective contacted Jason Fleming, a United corporate security manager, describing what they had found: intimate images of flight attendants, including Denson, posted online by Hill.
According to the lawsuit, United did nothing. The airline did not contact Denson, did not warn other employees, did not investigate Hill, and did not suspend or terminate him. Fleming allegedly told the detective that United had notified Denson and offered support, which the suit claims was false.
Hill was arrested in July 2024 on charges involving his ex-girlfriend, also a former United flight attendant. Only then did United fire him, and the suit alleges this happened only after efforts to save his job through the pilots' union reportedly failed.
The police investigation revealed a staggering scope of abuse. Investigators found images and videos of Denson on pornographic websites, Reddit, and Facebook, posted by Hill from at least 2017 through April 2024. He had allegedly created profiles impersonating her to solicit sex from strangers. Police discovered similar images of approximately ten other women, some also United employees.
Denson says she now works in constant fear that colleagues and passengers have seen the images, which remain online. After Hill's arrest became public, employees allegedly approached her at work to ask about it. The suit states there is no possible way of knowing the true number of intimate images and videos that exist and are in circulation.
The suit highlights what it describes as training failures. When Denson started at United in 2015, she received no harassment prevention training. Months later, she sat through a general misconduct session that only loosely mentioned sexual harassment and made no mention of online harassment or the distribution of intimate images. The suit claims that to this day, United has failed to provide training on online harassment despite issuing laptops, phones, and tablets to employees based on their roles.
Adding another layer to the allegations, the suit notes that Hill, as a First Officer, held supervisory authority over flight attendants during flights due to the nature of his job and rank. It was well known among flight attendants, the suit claims, that complaints against supervisors like pilots were not taken seriously and that wrongdoing by supervisors was often concealed.
After their 2021 breakup, Hill's behavior allegedly escalated. Between 2022 and 2023, he showed up uninvited at Denson's home, peered through her windows, left flowers and a six-page letter, and appeared at events she attended. Denson says she had no reasonable alternative but to bid only on flights where she could avoid working with Hill.
Denson seeks damages under Title VII, a federal statute addressing disclosure of intimate images, Colorado state law, and negligence claims. She is asking for at least $150,000 under the federal statute, plus compensatory and punitive damages. She also wants the court to order United to implement policies for preventing and addressing harassment.
The case is pending in the District of Colorado. United has not yet responded to the allegations.
