NEW YORK (JNS) – A group of Orthodox Jewish girls from New York has filed a complaint against Delta Air Lines and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines for the discrimination they say they faced on flights last summer, reported Insider.
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The 19 plaintiffs were part of a 54-person tour group of Jewish teenagers and their chaperones who were returning from a visit to historical sites in Europe, including Auschwitz, when the issues occurred with the airlines.
The Jewish teens said during their first KLM return flight from Kyiv to Amsterdam on Aug. 6, flight attendants disciplined them for removing their masks to eat homemade kosher food outside of the plane’s designated mealtimes. Other passengers who ate food at the same time were not disciplined, according to the complaint filed on Tuesday.
The Jewish teens were given a “final warning” for not complying with COVID-19 protocols regarding their masks and were threatened with arrest, said the complaint. They believe KLM staff targeted them with warnings “solely for the purpose of unlawfully harassing plaintiffs because of their Jewish race, ethnicity and/or religion.”
KLM apparently then didn’t allow the girls to board their next flight from Amsterdam to New York, according to the complaint cited by Insider. The banned passengers included two tour group members who had not traveled with the girls on their trip from Kyiv to Amsterdam. The group spent the night sleeping at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
“By barring plaintiffs from traveling without any regard to their individual conduct, defendants sought to target and penalize the group of Jewish passengers as a whole by barring 19 of its members from traveling,” said the complaint.
The following morning, the plaintiffs boarded a Delta flight to New York but were ordered off the plane for “misbehaving” after one girl switched seats with a woman who asked the teenager to do so.
The plaintiffs said Delta treated the group “differently and worse than non-Jewish passengers,” who reportedly also moved seats and were not reprimanded. They also alleged that a KLM security official repeatedly tormented the tour group after they deplaned.
The group was offered a flight later that day but declined because it would have involved traveling on Shabbat. They instead spent the night in Antwerp, Belgium, and traveled home to New York with United Airlines the following day, according to Insider.
They are asking for compensatory and punitive damage, and for Delta and KLM to be prohibited from “discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion, and in particular, discriminating against Jewish persons.”
The plaintiffs claimed that the treatment they experienced on their flights with Delta and KLM was “a devastating reminder … that anti-Semitism and discrimination against the Jewish race continue in 2021.”
I hope these Jewish girls make a lot of money off their lawsuits.
vin please keep us posted on the outcome.
And hopefully this will send a strong message to the Despicable KLM workers who are blatant anti semites.
The fact that the airlines were given the authority to act as judge, jury, and executioner is what the biggest problem was over here. They all went super wild with power. I had super wild power egos going back into the early 2000s but with the extra power trips that they had exploding in their egos over the past 2 years it was insane .
I sincerely hope that they are able to prove their case and win a substantial sum because it’s not only them but it’s other people who really want to sue these airlines for putting them on fake no fly lists etc.
Great!!!!! I hope they win big bucks!!!! Good for them!!!
I applaud the lawsuit as the airline had no right to punish. Jewish travelers should boycott airlines who behave anti-Semiticly. Having said that, we must all realize that while on an airplane, we are on a police state and must obey reasonable requests. Even if you feel that you are being singled out and others are allowed to get away with it. You dont have the right to change seats with someone else without the approval of the staff, even if both parties agree. There was once a situation where a sex offender was traveling. The staff knew and kept an eye and seated him appropriately. Someone went to change their seat and didnt understand why the staff reacted negatively. If you dont trust the airline, dont travel with them. If you travel, follow instructions responsibly. Which I am sure these girls did.
The MD-11 shown in the photo is from 2014. Just saying….
So instead of finding out the facts, people here just decide that KLM and Delta are anti-semites and should be punished… Has it ever dawned on you that when you fly, you are in an aircraft and not your home. And when there’s a group of you, that does not mean that you don’t need to follow the rules. Did any of you ever consider (I think I know the answer already) that it’s quite interesting that two different airlines kick these people off a flight, and that PERHAPS they might in fact have been at fault and not the airline? Airlines are in the business of taking people from point A to point B, and they earn money when you are on their aircraft. Kicking someone off does not do them any favors and they don’t earn the money. So yes, it is VERY likely that this group of people acted like a bunch of self-entitled brats that felt they did not need to follow the rules, and once they were told differently went ahead and sued the airlines. People on this thread are unreal and you should really get out in the world a bit more instead of sitting here swallowing all the so called ‘news’ as truth and then react on it. Shame on you!
Why couldn’t the girls just eat at the same time as everyone else? Why cause problems with the flight attendants. Sounds bratty .
Such a beautiful lesson in כבודה בת מלך פנימה
I hope all our girls will learn from this unadulterated act of tziniyous