Former British Airways Pilot Sentenced to Nine Years for Raping 12-Year-Old

A former British Airways pilot was sentenced to nine years and four months in prison after pleading guilty to raping a 12-year-old girl he groomed online, GB News reported. Kwame Yeboah, 30, had worked at the airline for three years, including two years as a Heathrow-based first officer. He first contacted the victim on Instagram in 2025.

The girl initially told him she was 17. Yeboah sent explicit images of himself to the child and held sexual conversations with her, calling her roughly twice a week, GB News reported. In February he drove four hours from his home in Reading to Liverpool, picked up the victim, and took her to an isolated location in Merseyside where he raped her three times.

A friend of the victim told her mother about the attack, and the mother contacted police. Officers identified Yeboah from details he had shared with the girl. He gave no-comment answers during his police interview.

Senior Crown Prosecutor Thomas Hanlon stated that Yeboah would have known early on that the victim was not the age she claimed. Hanlon noted she spoke about school and sent images of herself in school uniform, and that her young age would have been obvious when they met in person.

A British Airways spokesman said the airline was sickened by the actions of the individual and could only imagine the pain inflicted.

Yeboah was taken into custody by Merseyside Police following the February investigation and later pleaded guilty to the charges in April.