Germany's flagship airline has been fined $4 million by the U.S. Department of Transportation after being accused of discriminating against a bunch of Jewish passengers.
The regulator said on Tuesday that Lufthansa banned 128 people wearing traditional Orthodox Jewish clothing from boarding a connecting flight in Germany en route from New York City to Budapest in May 2022.
“Due to the alleged misconduct of some passengers,” the DOT said, “Lufthansa employees treated them all as a single group and denied them boarding,” regardless that most of the passengers didn’t know one another and weren’t traveling together.
Some people within the group allegedly violating the airline's mask policy. A video of the incident on the time showed Lufthansa employees telling passengers that “everyone must pay for the mistakes of a few” after which defining “everyone” as “Jews from JFK.” At the time, German media reported that staff denied boarding to people they believed were Jewish because they wore skullcaps or sidelocks.
The penalty is the most important ever imposed by the DOT against an airline for a civil rights violation.
“No one should be discriminated against when traveling, and today’s action sends a clear signal to the airline industry that we are prepared to investigate and take action when passengers’ civil rights are violated,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an announcement .
Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, Biden administration special envoy against anti-Semitism, said NBC News in 2022 that the small print of how the airline treated passengers were “unbelievable”.
“[When] When I first heard it, I said, “Oh, this have to be improper.” “Someone has to misreport this.” And then of course it turned out to be exactly right – and even worse than we thought,” she said.
In an announcement Tuesday, the airline said it cooperated fully with the DOT in conducting its investigation and worked with the American Jewish Committee following the incident.
“Through our ongoing collaboration, we have put together a unique training program in the aviation industry for our managers and employees to combat anti-Semitism and discrimination,” it said. “Lufthansa strives to be an ambassador of goodwill, tolerance, diversity and acceptance.”
Back then the carrier apologized for the incident and said there was “zero tolerance for racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination of any kind.”
Lipstadt said in 2022: “If an airline had done that, it would have been outrageous. But the terrible, terrible irony that came from the German national airline was outrageous.”
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