Black men sue American Airlines for ‘racial discrimination’

Three black men have filed a lawsuit against American Airlines, alleging that the company briefly removed them from a flight and accused them having body odour.

The men, who were not seated together and did not know each other, say that every black man was removed from the 5 January flight from Phoenix to New York.

“American Airlines singled us out for being Black, embarrassed us, and humiliated us,” the men said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

The Texas-based airline said that it is “investigating the matter, as the claims do not reflect our core values or our purpose of caring for people”.

According to a federal lawsuit filed by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, the men had already taken their seats and were preparing to depart from Phoenix when a flight attendant approached each of them and asked them to exit the plane.

Alvin Jackson, Emmanuel Jean Joseph, and Xavier Veal allege that, as they were leaving, they slowly realised that “every Black man on the flight was being removed”.

Each of the men had flown from Los Angeles earlier that day, with no issue.

At the flight gate, the three men, along with five others, were told by an airline agent that they had been “removed because a white male flight attendant had complained about an unidentified passenger’s body odour”.

“There is no explanation other than the color of our skin,” the men said in a statement on Wednesday, adding: “Clearly this was racial discrimination.”

American employees tried to re-book the men on other flights but there were no other flights to New York that night. The group was at that point allowed to re-take their seats on the original flight.

The lawsuit adds that while the men waited outside the plane, the pilot made an announcement telling passengers that there was a delay due to an issue with “body odour”. They allege that the claim about an odour is false.

“Throughout the flight – from the moment of their reboarding, in each interaction with the white male flight attendant, and continuing until landing – Plaintiffs experienced profound feelings of embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, anger, and distress,” the lawsuit states.

“The act of returning to their seats after the unwarranted delay, navigating past the predominantly white passengers, several of whom eyed them with anger and undue suspicion, compounded their humiliation.”

The lawsuit says that American should be forced to pay unspecified damages for the trauma the men experienced.

In 2017, the NAACP, a civil rights group, issued a travel advisory telling black Americans to avoid American Airlines due to discrimination. They lifted the advisory the following year after American announced that it had made changes to its operations.

American Airlines said in a statement: “We take all claims of discrimination very seriously and want our customers to have a positive experience when they choose to fly with us.

“Our teams are currently investigating the matter, as the claims do not reflect our core values or our purpose of caring for people.”