German airline Lufthansa has been fined $4 million for refusing to 128 Jewish passengers to board a flight in 2022, the US authorities introduced on Tuesday. The passengers have been carrying a garb specifically worn by Orthodox Jewish males and so they weren’t let to board a connecting flight in Frankfurt, Germany. The airline at the moment apologized and mentioned it had zero tolerance for “racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination of any kind.”These passengers weren’t travelling collectively and lots of of them didn’t know different however the airline handled them as a single group and prevented all of them from boarding for the alleged misbehavior of some, the U.S. Division of Transportation mentioned. USDOT mentioned the penalty is the most important it has ever issued towards an airline for civil rights violations.Lufthansa agreed to pay $2 million and the Division of Transportation mentioned it should credit score the airline with $2 million that it paid in compensation to passengers.Lufthansa didn’t admit to any violations underneath the consent order and it denied that any of its workers discriminated towards passengers. It mentioned as many as 60 passengers onboard at any given time have been disregarding crew directions.The airline mentioned it regretted and has publicly apologized on quite a few events for the circumstances surrounding the choice to disclaim boarding, USDOT mentioned within the consent order.The airline mentioned the incident “resulted from an unlucky collection of inaccurate communications, misinterpretations, and misjudgments all through the decision-making course of,” the Transportation Division mentioned.Lufthansa mentioned in an announcement Tuesday that for the reason that 2022 incident, it has totally cooperated with the DOT and stays targeted on many efforts together with partnering with American Jewish Committee to curate “a first-of-its type coaching program within the airline business for our managers and workers to deal with antisemitism and discrimination.”
