Black passengers of an airline are suing over an apparent body odor.
According to CBS, these passengers are suing American Airlines, alleging that employees from the company removed a total of eight Black men from a flight because of a complaint regarding a passenger with body odor.
This lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District of New York, claiming that American Airlines Flight 832 from Phoenix to New York had American Airlines employees removing eight Black men from the plane because of an alleged complaint of “offensive body odor.”
Video critical in the lawsuit confirmed that a group of Black men who didn’t know each other were removed from a flight. According to the lawsuit, they were the only Black passengers on the flight.
The three plaintiffs, Emanuel Jean Joseph, Alvin Jackson and Xavier Veal were on a connecting flight from Los Angeles. During the flight, no employee from American Airlines said anything about them regarding offensive odor.
Jean Joseph told CBS News senior transportation correspondent, Kris Van Cleave, that only Black men were being removed from the flight when he gathered his belongings.
“I started freaking out,” Veal said. So, he decided to record the incident on his phone.
The lawsuit then claims that the men were held in the jetway for close to an hour and then moved to the gate area before being told they would be rebooked on another flight to New York later that day. The lawsuit alleges that an employee of American Airlines said that the complaint regarding body odor was from a “white male flight attendant.”
Seen in the video was a gate agent who agreed that race was a factor in the decision-making process regarding the removal of the men from the flight.
But when another flight to New York couldn’t be found, the men were eventually put back on the same plane. Jackson said the experience was uncomfortable.
“Everybody staring at me, and all the other Black people on the plane were just taken off,” he said.
“I knew that as soon as I got on that plane, a sea of White faces were going to be looking at me and blaming me for their late flight of an hour,” Jean Joseph said.
