Skier off team after plane urination flap

A man accused of urinating on a girl aboard a JetBlue flight this week has been booted off the U.S. Ski Team's development squad and faces a federal charge, The Associated Press reported Friday.

Robert "Sandy" Vietze was dismissed from the team for conduct violations, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association said in a statement emailed to the wire service Friday.

"Based on the information we have, Sandy Vietze is in violation of the USSA code of conduct and team agreement and has been dismissed from the team," U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association Executive Vice President of Athletics Luke Bodensteiner said in the statement.

The U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn said Vietze faces a federal misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure, AP said.

The girl, 11, was traveling cross-country with her sister and cancer-stricken father to visit her grandmother on eastern Long Island when Vietze, of Warren, Vt., urinated on her, it was reported this week. The family has not been identified.

Vietze told police he was too drunk to realize he wasn't in the bathroom, the AP said. Police detained him at Kennedy Airport on Wednesday after he arrived on a red-eye flight from Portland, Ore.

Vietze had been a member of the 2012 U.S. Ski Team developmental squad working toward the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Russia.

A spokeswoman for JetBlue Airways Corp., which is based in Forest Hills, confirmed there had been an incident, but declined to provide any more details, the AP reported. The AP said it attempted to contact the Vietze family for comment at their home in Vermont, but said calls went unanswered.

Vietze attended the Green Mountain Valley School, a prestigious ski academy in Vermont, and specialized in the giant slalom, slalom, super G and super combined.