he US Department of Transportation has issued a $4 million fine to the German carrier Lufthansa — a record amount from the US agency for discrimination.
The airline was penalised for refusing to board 128 Jews in Frankfurt, Germany, in May 2022, on their way from New York to Budapest in Hungary “to attend an annual memorial event to honour an Orthodox rabbi,” according to the department.
But while the airline had expressed regret for the incident, it did not accept that any of its employees had engaged in discrimination, the department said.
According to the department, Lufthansa had prevented 128 Jewish passengers, “most of whom wore distinctive garb typically worn by Orthodox Jewish men,” from boarding a connecting flight in Germany “based on the alleged misconduct of some passengers”.
It added: “Despite many of the passengers not knowing each other nor travelling together, passengers interviewed by Department of Transportation 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.”
It called the penalty “the largest ever issued by the Department of Transportation against an airline for civil-rights violations.”
US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said: “No one should face discrimination when they travel, and today’s action sends a clear message to the airline industry that we are prepared to investigate and take action whenever passengers’ civil rights are violated.”
The department said it had received more than 40 complaints from Jewish passengers. “During the first flight, the captain alerted Lufthansa security that some passengers were failing to follow crew instructions and were connecting to another flight to Budapest, although Lufthansa later failed to identify any one passenger who failed to follow crew member instructions,” it said.
“The alert to security resulted in a hold being placed on over 100 passengers’ tickets with a final destination of Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport, which then prevented passengers from boarding their next scheduled flight at Frankfurt Airport,” the department said. “All of the passengers with a hold placed on their ticket were Jewish.”
Lufthansa did not name non-compliant passengers and the German airline’s staff “recognised that the refusal to transport the entire group could result in the exclusion of passengers that had complied with crew instructions on LH 401 but concluded it was not practical to address each passenger individually,” the department said.
“Most wore the distinctive garb typically worn by Orthodox Jewish men (black hats, black jackets, white shirts, black pants and black dress shoes).”
The passsengers interviewed by the department said they had not observed any passengers failing to comply with crew instructions.
Lufthansa acknowledged that the crew of the flight did not have personal knowledge of the situation and at that time “Lufthansa concluded that it was not practical to address each passenger individually,” the department stated.
Lufthansa airliners in Frankfurt airport (photo: Getty Images)
The American Jewish Committee stated that the May 2022 event was “deeply upsetting.”
Since then, the airline “has taken decisive steps to address the situation, including adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, to ensure that such an event does not occur again,” the AJC said, commending Lufthansa “for learning from its mistakes”.
While Lufthansa had apologised on numerous occasions “for the circumstances surrounding the decision to deny boarding” to the passengers, the Department of Transportation stated, “Lufthansa, however, denies any suggestion that any of its employees engaged in any form of discrimination.”
The German carrier “strongly disputes” that the US department has legal authority to enforce the US law for events that occurred in Germany.
Lufthansa said that “a large number of the passengers” who were denied boarding “repeatedly disregarded crew instructions to wear face masks, which at the time was mandated under German law due to the COVID-19 public health emergency”.
The airline also noted that “certain flight attendants on LH 401 permitted and facilitated praying by small gatherings of passengers during the flight, which the carrier asserts underscores the Lufthansa crew’s lack of any discriminatory feelings or actions toward any of the passengers.”
The airline said “a large number of passengers (as many as 60 passengers at any given time during the flight) repeatedly disregarded both in-flight public address announcements from the flight deck and in-person crew instructions,” according to the department.
“In some cases, passengers not only refused to comply with safety and security requirements, but argued with Lufthansa flight attendants and other passengers who courteously reminded them of the obligation to wear masks,” which put the crew and other passengers “in a difficult situation”, the airline argued.
The German carrier stated that it could not identify those who broke the rules, because “the infractions were so numerous, the misconduct continued for substantial portions of the flight and at different intervals and the passengers changed seats during the flight.”
It disagreed with the department’s position that the crew could have reasonably identified the passengers at issue.
Despite disagreeing with the department’s conclusions and disputing the jurisdiction, Lufthansa was entering into the consent order to avoid litigation threatened by the department, the department’s order said.
