A US professor has been charged with harassing a stewardess on a Taiwan plane and is barred from leaving the island, prosecutors said on Sunday.
The Taoyuan Prosecutor's Office said Noel Harold Kaylo Jr, 62, had been charged with harassing a stewardess on a US-bound China Airlines (CAL) flight, the dpa reported.
Kaylo was released on a 50,000-Taiwan-dollar (1,500-US-dollar) bond Sunday, pending a court hearing, and told to stay in Taiwan.
The incident occurred Friday afternoon when Kaylo, an associate professor at Taiwan's National Sun Yat-sen University, boarded CAL flight CI012 to return to New York.
When Kaylo sat down on a jump seat, which is used by the cabin crew, a stewardess asked him to go to his own seat.
Kaylo said he did not want to go to his aisle seat because he would be bumped by passing passengers.
When the stewardess told him that he had to return to his seat as the plane was about to take off, Kaylo patted the stewardess's behind six times, shouting: "You know how it feels being bumped by others? It is like this!"
The stewardess, feeling she had been molested, alerted airport police, who removed Kaylo from the flight and turned him over for prosecution.
CAL spokesman Bruce Chen said the airline was behind its crew members and always told its crew members to report incidents of harassment by passengers.