Three black men who were allegedly kicked off an American Airlines plane alongside five other dark-skinned strangers over body odor have taken the airline to court, accusing it of discrimination and racism.
“It is almost inconceivable to find an explanation for this other than the color of their skin, especially since they did not know each other and were not sitting next to each other,” lamented Wednesday the three men’s lawyer, Sue Huhta, told CBS News.
It was in the US court for the Eastern District of New York that the three plaintiffs, Emmanuel Jean Joseph, Alvin Jackson and Xavier Veal, filed a complaint against American Airlines, which allegedly expelled them from Flight 832 between Phoenix and New York in January, according to the American media.
That day, the three travelers, who did not know each other, were allegedly forced to pack up their belongings and leave their seats at the same time as the only five other dark-skinned men on the plane. , they allegedly alleged in the court document.
Screenshot taken from Platform X
“I started to panic,” said Xavier Veal, who then began filming the scene on his cell phone, he told CBS News.
That’s when an airline employee allegedly told them they would be redirected to another flight to New York after a complaint of “bad body odor” from a “white male flight attendant,” noted the American media.
And according to their lawyer, American Airlines simply refused to provide its customers with any answers about the incident afterward, stating that it seemed “pretty obvious that race was part of that dynamic.”
Especially since the three men were earlier on the same connecting flight from Los Angeles, which had gone off without a hitch.
Except that the airline would not have been able to find a new flight for the eight men, so after making all the passengers wait for an hour, it would have put them back on the same flight: an uncomfortable experience, they testified.
“I knew that as soon as I got on that plane, a sea of white faces would look at me and blame me for their hour-long flight,” sighed Jean Joseph in an interview.
At this time, the amount of the restitution has not been stated in the suit, but according to CBS legal analyst Rikki Klieman, it may be aimed more at public exposure than at obtaining financial compensation.
For its part, the airline would have indicated that it takes “all allegations of discrimination very seriously”, indicating that an investigation into the matter would have been opened, “because the allegations do not reflect our fundamental values or our objective of taking care of people,” she reportedly told CBS News in writing.
