The United States fined Lufthansa a record $4 million ($3 million) after the airline banned Jewish passengers from a flight in 2022 because some allegedly refused to follow rules requiring port of the mask.
The Transport Ministry said Lufthansa discriminated against passengers, treating them “as if they were all one group” even though many were not traveling together and did not know each other.
He said the penalty was the heaviest ever imposed on an airline for civil rights violations.
Lufthansa said in the consent order that it accepted the payment to avoid litigation, but denied discrimination, attributing the incident to “an unfortunate series of inaccurate communications.”
“Lufthansa is committed to being an ambassador of goodwill, tolerance, diversity and acceptance,” the airline said in a statement, adding that it had cooperated with the investigation and remained focused on training of its staff.
The episode involved passengers traveling from New York to Budapest, with a connection in Frankfurt, in May 2022.
Most of the passengers were men, wearing “distinctive clothing typically worn by Orthodox Jewish men” and had used the same handful of travel agencies to book their tickets, according to the DOT.
On the first flight, the captain alerted Lufthansa security that some passengers had not followed crew instructions requiring masks and prohibiting gatherings in aisles and other places on board.
The alert led to the blocking of tickets for more than 100 passengers, all of whom were Jewish, which led to them being blocked from their connecting flight.
The DOT said Lufthansa recognized that the measure would also harm those who complied with the instructions, but “concluded that it was not practical to address each passenger individually.”
The majority of them were booked on other flights on the same day.
“No one should face discrimination when traveling, 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 being violated,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.
The DOT said passengers interviewed as part of the investigation said they did not witness bad behavior and that Lufthansa subsequently failed to identify a single passenger who failed to follow suit. the rules.
But in the consent order, Lufthansa said its staff was unable to isolate passengers because “the violations were very numerous, the misconduct continued for a large part of the flight and at different intervals and passengers changed seats during the flight.
The DOT said it was requiring Lufthansa to pay $2 million and would give the airline a credit of $2 million it already paid to passengers as part of a legal settlement.
