American Airlines Flight Attendant Accused of Smuggling Rat on Board in her Underwear

An American Airlines flight attendant has been accused of smuggling pet rats inside her underwear onto an international flight. Now she's suing for the allegations.

Louann Giambattista, 55, claims that she has been blacklisted by customers ever since she was accused of carrying the rats on board. The 33-year airline worker is now seeking damages for "debilitating anxiety" and post-traumatic stress disorder because of the airline, the Daily Mail reports.

According to papers filed in Brooklyn federal court, a pilot claimed that Giambattista had "a bulge in [her] pocket" and saw "what he thought was a live pet."

Another coworker claimed that she also saw the woman feeding a pet rat on a later flight to Miami. However Giambattista says the bread that she had in a paper cup was for herself and not for a pet rat. She claims she used the cup to avoid looking unprofessional in front of passengers.

Colleagues on the Miami flight also claimed to have smelled a rat and Giambattista was forced to go through customs when landing in Florida. She claims that she was questioned and her luggage was searched for more than an hour, but customs officials didn't find any rodents.

Despite customs officials not finding anything, Giambattista says the airline put a flag on her passport. She now had to go through an extensive search in customs on every trip and she says that ICE agent have bullied her and threatened her with a strip search. Due to this, Giambattista says that reporting to work became nearly impossible.

Giambattista's lawyer told the New York Post that the flight attendant is an animal lover but she knows well enough to not bring her pets on board.
"Everybody has pets - she has her pets at home, not at work,' Stephen Morelli said. "She's not a nut. They're making her out to be a nut. She's got a lot of different pets. She had the rat - it died."

The flight attendant says that the claims about her smuggling the rat on board are "absurd" and "patently false. There was no reason for it. People say, "There must have been a reason" but there was none."