Washington:
US authorities have hit Lufthansa with a document $4 million penalty after discovering the airline discriminated towards over 100 Jewish vacationers by blocking them from boarding a flight in 2022, officers mentioned Tuesday.
The 128 passengers had been denied boarding to a connecting flight after a couple of didn’t comply with directions, together with anti-Covid masks necessities, on a flight from america to Germany, US transport authorities mentioned.
The airline didn’t instantly reply to an AFP request for remark.
The US Division of Transportation mentioned the penalty over the boarding refusal on Might 3, 2022 in Frankfurt was the most important it had issued for a civil rights violation.
The vacationers — who wore distinctive clothes like black hats and jackets — advised investigators they had been handled as in the event that they had been one group despite the fact that many weren’t flying collectively and did not know one another.
Lufthansa denied boarding “to everybody for the obvious misbehavior of some, as a result of they had been brazenly and visibly Jewish,” DOT authorities mentioned in a submitting.
The issue started when the captain of the primary flight reported to Lufthansa safety that some passengers weren’t following guidelines, together with carrying of face masks throughout the journey and never standing in teams in aisles or close to emergency exits.
DOT authorities obtained over 40 discrimination complaints from Jewish passengers on this case.
Lufthansa advised DOT that it has publicly apologized on quite a few events for barring the passengers from persevering with their journeys, however denied any suggestion that any of its workers engaged in any type of discrimination.
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