Lufthansa agrees to pay $4 million penalty over treatment of Jewish passengers

Lufthansa, a German airline, was fined $4 million by the US government for refusing to allow 128 Jewish passengers to board a connecting flight in 2022. The airline initially apologized for the incident, stating that it had zero tolerance for racism, anti-Semitism, and discrimination. However, Lufthansa later denied discrimination, attributing the incident to an "unfortunate series of inaccurate communications." The passengers involved were traveling from New York to Frankfurt, where they were attempting to board a flight to Budapest. The Transportation Department stated that Lufthansa prohibited the passengers from boarding on the basis of alleged misbehavior by some of the passengers, with most of the passengers being Jewish men wearing Orthodox Jewish garb. It's worth noting that some articles imply that the airline treated the 128 passengers as a single group, despite them not knowing each other, which may have contributed to the incident.