The United States fined German airline Lufthansa $4 million for its treatment of a group of Jewish passengers who were denied boarding to a 2022 flight in Frankfurt after flying from New York to Germany.
The U.S. Department of Transportation said Tuesday that the penalty was the largest the agency has ever imposed on an airline for civil rights violations, although Lufthansa was given $2 million in compensation to passengers, cutting the penalty in half .
The department said most of the 128 passengers denied boarding “were wearing distinctive robes typically worn by Orthodox Jewish men.” Although many did not know each other and were not traveling together, they told investigators that Lufthansa treated them as a group and denied them boarding due to alleged misconduct by some passengers.
They were among 131 passengers who flew from New York to Budapest via Frankfurt to take part in an annual memorial service honoring an Orthodox rabbi.
Some said flight attendants told them on the first flight about the requirement to wear a face mask and not gather in aisles or near emergency exits. Lufthansa crew members were unable to detect passengers who did not follow their instructions, which the airline said was due to the sheer number of violations and the frequent swapping of seats during the flight.
The captain alerted Lufthansa security forces about the passengers’ misconduct, at which point the steps were taken that resulted in them being denied boarding to the connecting flight, according to a consent order in the case.
Lufthansa rejected “any assertion by the ministry that the events in this matter were due to any form of discrimination” and denied that any employee acted in a biased manner, but acknowledged “flaws in the company’s procedures and communications.”
Lufthansa reached an agreement with the most passengers in 2022.