Most public entities and workplaces strictly prohibit religious discrimination. Unfortunately, such stipulations are not always followed. 

In today’s case, German flag carrier Lufthansa was recently fined a large sum of money for reported discrimination against Jewish passengers.

Denied Boarding

The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) announced a $4 million fine against Lufthansa related to a 2022 incident.

This incident involved 128 Jewish passengers who were traveling from New York (J.F.K.) to Budapest, Hungary (BUD) via Frankfurt (F.R.A.). This was for an annual memorial event honoring an Orthodox rabbi.

Keep in mind that this was 2022, more specifically, on May 4th. By this time, the United States had dropped the mask mandate on planes, and Frankfurt Airport also said masks were no longer required. Still, however, masks were required to be worn on flights to and from Germany.

On the first flight, LH401, from J.F.K. to Frankfurt, a significant number of passengers from the Budapest-bound group reportedly still needed to comply with the mask mandate. This was a nuisance for the crew, who had to remind those passengers to keep their masks on constantly.

While this was an issue, no doubt, the subsequent reaction of Lufthansa was even worse. The Captain of LH401 alerted a Lufthansa security duty manager in Frankfurt about the passengers’ misbehavior.

Furthermore, he specified that the passengers causing the issues were connecting to Budapest. This caused the manager to place a “high priority comment” on all of the Budapest-bound passengers coming from LH401.

When this type of comment is placed on an itinerary, that passenger can only board their connecting flight once the note is read. The wording “high priority” is not a good thing in this case, as it means that there is a big issue that should be treated as a “high priority.”

You can already see the problem here. Even though the passengers who failed to comply with the mask mandate were headed to Budapest, Lufthansa ended up isolating ALL passengers coming from LH401 who were connecting to Budapest. 

To make matters worse, every single passenger who was given the “high priority comment” was Jewish. This was irrespective of whether they were complying with the mask requirement or not.

No exact details were given about which passengers were misbehaving when it came to the masks, so once everyone reached the connecting gate for Budapest, Lufthansa denied all passengers boarding.

Not only were Jewish passengers from the large group denied boarding, but even those who “looked Jewish.” 

In a video that went viral, a Lufthansa gate agent is heard saying that “everyone has to pay for a couple,” meaning that because of the mistake of a few passengers, everyone will now be denied boarding whether or not they were complying.

Lufthansa Gets Fined

Understandably, Lufthansa got a lot of backlash for how it handled this situation. The airline’s C.E.O. issued a personal apology to the passengers affected.

Furthermore, the carrier provided monetary compensation to the affected passengers, with Lufthansa paying $21,000 to each individual. That included a $20,000 settlement plus $1,000 to cover expenses that resulted from the denied boarding.

Surprisingly, the USDOT issued its fine over two years later. They released a statement noting that Lufthansa’s treatment of the 128 Jewish passengers as a collective group constituted “discrimination based on religion in violation of 49 U.S.C. § 40127.”

The USDOT went on to mention that Lufthansa’s staff “made no meaningful effort to specifically identify and track the individuals who failed to follow crew instructions...and tailor the consequences accordingly.”

The statement further mentions that had the crew done so; multiple innocent passengers would not have had to deal with the stressful situation that followed.

The $4 million fine imposed on Lufthansa by the USDOT is the most significant penalty ever issued by the entity against an airline over a civil rights violation.