German airline Lufthansa has been fined $4 million for not allowing 128 Jewish passengers to board a flight in May 2022.
It was the largest penalty ever issued against an airline for civil rights violations, said the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in a news release on Tuesday.
“Despite many of the passengers not knowing each other nor traveling together, passengers interviewed by DOT investigators stated that Lufthansa treated them all as if they were a single group and denied them boarding for the alleged misbehaviour of a few,” the department said.
On May 3, 2022, passengers were travelling from New York City to Budapest, with a connection in Frankfurt. They were going on the trip to Hungary for a memorial event in honour of an Orthodox rabbi. Many of the passengers were Jewish men who were wearing traditional Orthodox Jewish clothing — black hats, black jackets, white shirts, black pants, and black dress shoes — according to a consent order issued by the department.
On the flight from New York City to Frankfurt, the airline alleged that some passengers were not wearing masks, which were required at the time. It also alleged that passengers were gathering in the aisles or galleys, potentially blocking emergency exits.
The plane’s captain made three announcements during the flight, telling passengers to properly wear masks and not to block the exits, Lufthansa said in the consent order. The captain told passengers that a “potential consequence for failing to adhere to the rules and follow crewmember instructions could be the possible exclusion from future transportation, including not being permitted to board a connecting flight.”
The captain told security that some passengers were not following instructions, according to the DOT investigation.
Because security was alerted, the tickets of more than 100 passengers on that flight were put on hold. They were prevented from boarding the connecting flight from Frankfurt to Budapest.
“All of the passengers with a hold placed on their ticket were Jewish,” DOT said.
“Lufthansa staff recognized that the refusal to transport the entire group could result in the exclusion of passengers that had complied with crew instructions … but concluded it was not practical to address each passenger individually.”
More than 40 Jewish passengers filed discrimination complaints to the department.
After its an investigation, the department said that Lufthansa “failed to show that its crew took any action to document the identities of specific passengers who engaged in misconduct.”
The airline maintained that its conduct did not result from “any form of discrimination,” per the consent order.
Lufthansa agreed to the terms to “avoid litigation threatened by the Department, despite Lufthansa’s belief that the Department lacks jurisdiction over events that occurred outside the United States, and despite disagreeing with the Department’s conclusions,” the airline said.
It added that it has “zero tolerance for any form of religious or ethnic-based discrimination.”
The department said that $2 million should be paid within 30 days of the order and the remaining $2 million is being credited to Lufthansa for compensation it had already paid to affected passengers.
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