Lufthansa: Lufthansa fined $4 million for blocking 128 Jewish passengers in 2022

German airline Lufthansa was fined $4 million for refusing 128 Jewish passengers to board a flight in 2022, the US government announced on Tuesday. Passengers wore costumes specially worn by Orthodox Jewish men and were not allowed to board a connecting flight in Frankfurt, Germany. The airline at the time apologized and said it had zero tolerance for “racism, antisemitism and discrimination of any kind.”
These passengers were not traveling together and many of them did not know others, but the airline treated them as a single group and prevented them all from boarding due to alleged bad behavior by some, the U.S. Department of Transportation said. he said.
USDOT said the penalty is the largest ever issued against an airline for civil rights violations.
Lufthansa agreed to pay $2 million and the Department of Transport said it will credit the airline for the $2 million it paid in compensation to passengers.
Lufthansa did not admit any violations of the consent order and denied that any of its employees discriminated against passengers. He said up to 60 passengers on board at one point were disregarding crew instructions.
The airline said it regretted and publicly apologized on multiple occasions for the circumstances surrounding the decision to deny boarding, USDOT said in the consent order.
The airline said the incident “resulted from an unfortunate series of inaccurate communications, misinterpretations and poor judgments throughout the decision-making process,” the Department of Transport said.
Lufthansa said in a statement Tuesday that since the 2022 incident, it has cooperated fully with the DOT and remains focused on many efforts, including partnering with the American Jewish Committee to organize “a first-of-its-kind airline training program for our managers and employees to combat anti-Semitism and discrimination.”