Source: AaronP/Bauer-Griffin / Getty / American Airlines
American Airlines’ current motto is “Let good take flight,” but that wasn’t true for three Black male passengers.
The airline company is now the subject of a racial discrimination lawsuit after three Black men, who say they don’t know each other, were ordered off their flight back in January.
The three men filed their lawsuit in a New York federal court on Wednesday, May 29, claiming they, along with five other Black men, were asked to get off a Phoenix flight before it departed.
The Grio reports the men were sitting in different sections of the plane and said an airline employee informed them that they were removed because a flight attendant complained about a passenger’s body odor.
The men feel their removal from the flight was solely due to their race.
The lawsuit filed by Public Citizen, a consumer-advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader, says American Airlines offered to rebook their flights but allowed the men back on the plane after it was clear there were no other flights to New York.
American Airlines Is Investigating The Incident
Susan Huhta, an employment law attorney in Washington, D.C., who is representing the three men, said, “If American Airlines received a complaint about a Black male passenger with offensive body odor but could not verify the complaint, the solution should not have been to eject eight separate Black men from the plane.”
“We take all claims of discrimination very seriously and want our customers to have a positive experience when they choose to fly with us,” American Airlines said in a statement. “Our teams are currently investigating the matter, as the claims do not reflect our core values or our purpose of caring for people.”
This latest incident comes after American Airlines said they would make changes after the NAACP issued a warning in 2017 to Black travelers about booking flights with the airline due to several African American passengers saying they experienced racial discrimination.