Lufthansa ordered to pay $4M penalty for denying boarding to 128 Jewish passengers in 2022

The new penalty is the largest amount ever issued in the United States against an airline over civil rights violations.

By Jackie Hajdenberg, JTA

The U.S. Department of Transportation has ordered the German airline Lufthansa to pay a $4 million fine for a 2022 incident in which 128 Jewish passengers were denied boarding.

The incident, which occurred in May 2022, affected passengers wearing traditionally Orthodox Jewish clothing who were traveling from New York City through Frankfurt to Budapest.

In response to a few passengers’ alleged misbehavior partly related to mask compliance, Lufthansa employees reportedly treated the 128 Jewish passengers as one single group, though many of the passengers did not know each other, nor were they traveling together.

Airline employees prohibited them from boarding their flight to Budapest.

The incident generated outrage from the Jewish community and captured the attention of leading antisemitism watchdogs, including Deborah Lipstadt, the United States’ special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, who told NBC News that she found the Lufthansa incident “unbelievable.”

“[When] I first heard it, I said, ‘Oh, this must be wrong,” Lipstadt said at the time. “Someone must be misreporting this.’ And then of course, it turned out to be precisely right — and worse than we even thought.”

Later that year, the American Jewish Committee signed a memorandum of understanding with Lufthansa, announcing that Lufthansa would adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism and that the AJC would train airline employees on how to identify and respond to antisemitism.

In July 2022, Lufthansa CEO Jens Ritter said the company would hire someone to fill a senior management position “for the prevention of discrimination and antisemitism.”

The airline also agreed to pay each affected passenger $20,000 from the airline in November 2022, plus a reimbursement of $1,000.

The new penalty, which followed an investigation into more than 40 discrimination complaints from Jewish passengers aboard the flight, is the largest amount ever issued in the United States against an airline over civil rights violations, the federal transportation department said in a statement Tuesday.

“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,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.

In the consent order attached to the DOT’s statement announcing the penalty, Lufthansa denied the occurrence of any discrimination, instead attributing the incident to “an unfortunate series of inaccurate communications, misinterpretations, and misjudgments throughout the decision-making process.” The company again apologized for the incident.

“Lufthansa states that it has zero tolerance for any form of religious or ethnic-based discrimination, including antisemitism,” the company said in the consent order.

“Lufthansa states that it and the entire passenger airline group have had a robust and fruitful relationship with the Jewish communities around the world, especially in the United States. Lufthansa states that it is a trusted choice, to this day, for members of the Orthodox Jewish Community who continue to use the Lufthansa Group for travel throughout Europe as well as to Israel.”

The Lufthansa airline group has canceled all flights to and from Israel until at least the end of this month, amid broad interruptions in air service induced by widening conflict in the region.

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