A Lufthansa plane is parked on the tarmac at Frankfurt Airport, Germany.
Ralph Orlowski | Reuters
Germany’s flagship airline has been fined $4 million by the US Department of Transportation for allegedly discriminating against Jewish passenger groups.
Regulators said Tuesday that Lufthansa has barred 128 people wearing traditional Orthodox Jewish clothing from boarding a connecting flight in Germany from New York City to Budapest in May 2022. did.
The Department of Transport said Lufthansa staff had “organized all passengers into one group” “based on allegations of misconduct by some passengers”, even though many of the passengers did not know each other or were not traveling together. They treated him as if he were a foreigner and refused him boarding.”
Some people in the group allegedly violated the airline’s mask policy. Video of the incident from the time shows Lufthansa staff telling passengers that “everyone has to pay” for several mistakes, then defining “everyone” as “Jews from JFK.” It was reflected. At the time, German media reported that staff members were refusing to board people they believed to be Jewish because they were wearing skull caps or sidelocks.
The fine is the largest fine ever imposed against an airline by the Department of Transportation for civil rights violations.
“No one should face discrimination while traveling,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. It sends a clear message that there is.”
Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the Biden administration’s special envoy to counter anti-Semitism, told NBC News in 2022 that the details of how airlines treated passengers were “unbelievable.”
“When I first heard it, I thought, ‘Oh, this must be wrong. Someone must be misrepresenting this.'” And of course, it turned out to be exactly right. But it was worse than we expected,” she said.
The airline said in a statement Tuesday that it is fully cooperating with the DOT conducting its investigation and partnering with the American Jewish Committee following the incident.
“Through our continued collaboration, we have designed the airline industry’s first training program for our management and employees to address anti-Semitism and discrimination,” the company said. “Lufthansa is dedicated to being an ambassador of goodwill, tolerance, diversity and inclusion.”
At the time, the airline said it had “zero tolerance for racism, anti-Semitism or discrimination of any kind” and apologized for the incident.
Lipstadt said in 2022: “If any other airline had done that, it would have been outrageous. But this terrible, gross sarcasm from Germany’s national carrier was outrageous.”
