The group of 128 passengers were denied boarding on a flight in Frankfurt in 2022 after flying to Germany from New York.
German airline Lufthansa was fined a record $4 million (€3.6million) over its treatment of a group of Jewish passengers who attempted to board a 2022 flight in Frankfurt — the largest it has ever issued against an airline for a civil rights violation.
The US Department of Transportation said that a group of 128 passengers who were denied boarding on a flight in 2022 all “wore distinctive garb typically worn by Orthodox Jewish men.”
The passengers, who were not all travelling together, told investigators that Lufthansa mistakenly treated them as if they were a group before denying boarding to all based on the alleged misbehaviour by some.
Lufthansa crew members said the passengers failed to obey their instructions to wear face masks and not gather in aisles or near emergency exits.
Their alleged misbehaviour resulted in the passengers being denied boarding on the connecting flight. The majority were rebooked on a flight the following day.
The Department of Transportation argued that it could not find evidence of misbehaviour based on the passengers they interviewed for the investigation, adding that Lufthansa crew members failed to identify individual passengers who hadn’t followed the rules.
The crew members said that this was due to the sheer number of violations and because many of the passengers had traded seats.
At the time, German media reported some passengers on the flight had refused to wear face masks, with Lufthansa staff then blocking all passengers visibly identifiable as Jews from their connecting flight.
According to a statement Lufthansa published in 2022, the airline apologised for the incident and reached an undisclosed settlement with the majority of the passengers.
Lufthansa was given credit for $2 million (€3.6million) for compensation it gave the passengers, cutting the fine in half.
The airline did not immediately respond to requests for comment.