What? A mess.

If reports are to be believed, a lot of passengers were denied boarding on a flight because they looked Jewish, to pay for the mask-related crimes. I want to tackle this as simply as possible.

There were mask compliance issues on a Lufthansa flight

DansDeals has a detailed description of what happened. The situation started on a flight from New York to Germany.

It was estimated that there were 135-170 Orthodox Jews traveling on the flight, including many who were going on a pilgrimage to visit the grave of a Rabbi. The estimate is based on knowing that one travel agency sold 80 tickets, another sold 30 tickets, and a bunch of people booked individually with cash or points.

There were some issues with masks. While the United States does not require masks on planes, masks are required on flights from Germany.

It's fair to say that the crew was very careful about making sure everyone wore their mask. The decision was made to deny boarding to some passengers due to not following crew member instructions, due to the fact that there were compliance issues with them.

That's fair, except.

By association, Lufthansa denied all Jews boarding

Many armed German police officers were present at the departure gate of the plane that was going to Hungary. There were people who were confirmed to have mask compliance issues on the flight to New York who were not denied boarding.

According to reports, the captain made the decision about which passengers should be denied boarding.

A passenger can be heard talking to a Lufthansa agent in a video that has since been taken down for violating terms of service.

Passenger: I was wearing a mask the entire time, why am I lumped in with them?Lufthansa agent: It was one, everyone has to pay for a couple.Passenger: What do you mean everybody, everybody from that race? Everybody else on the flight went.Lufthansa agent: Not everybody.Passenger: The non-Jewish people on the flight went. Why are only the Jewish people paying for other people’s crimes?Lufthansa agent: Because it’s Jews coming from JFK.Passenger: Oh, so Jewish people coming from JFK are paying for the crimes of a few people?Lufthansa agent: NoPassenger: Jewish people are paying for the crimes of Israel?Lufthansa agent: NoPassenger: Just the Jewish people on that flight?Lufthansa agent: Do you want to discuss with me or no? Do you want to listen to me?Passenger: I’m like shocked beyond, never in my adult life. I’ve never heard this.Lufthansa agent: If you want to do it like this, Jewish people who were the mess, who made the problems.Passenger: So Jewish people on the plane made a problem, so all Jews are banned from Lufthansa for the day?

Lufthansa agent: Just for this flight.

A gate agent can be heard explaining in a video posted to YouTube.

“Due to operational reasons, coming from the flight from New York, for all passengers here we have to cancel you on this flight. You know why it was.”

Airport police only enforce policies of airlines, and have no say in any of this, so things get tense when a passenger calls the police officer a Nazi.

127 people were banned from the airline for 24 hours. It has been confirmed that only 30 people were on the flight.

I can’t think of any defense for Lufthansa here?

I want to believe that there's more to the story than an airline punishing people for their actions and lumping everyone of the same race together. There is quite a bit of evidence suggesting that this is mostly as it appears.

  • There’s a difference between banning an individual for a mask related incident, and banning an entire group of people for their association with someone who had a mask related issue
  • Unless Lufthansa can produce inflight disturbance reports for each and every one of the people denied boarding, then it sure seems like everyone was just lumped in together
  • The Lufthansa agent herself confirms that others are being punished for the crimes of some — “it was one, everyone has to pay for a couple”
  • It’s not even like all the Orthodox Jewish passengers booked through the same channels, but they booked through many sources, but were all treated the same

We've seen a lot of mask related incidents in the past couple of years, but I don't think I've ever seen a case where all passengers were banned from a certain flight because of something they did wrong.

I wonder if anyone in a position of authority was involved in the decision making here. The German airline denying boarding to passengers for being Jewish is horrible, and is just being plain wrong. You would think that Lufthansa would be a bit more sensitive about that topic.

I'm curious to see if anything comes of this, after Lufthansa indicated that this situation is being investigated.

Bottom line

A majority of passengers on the flight to Hungary were denied boarding because they were Jewish. The airline banned all Jewish passengers by association because of mask compliance issues on the flight from New York.

The airline has to do better than this, so I hope they conduct a proper investigation.

What do you think about the incident? Please be respectful, given the sensitive nature of the topic.

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