3 Black passengers sue American Airlines after alleging racial discrimination following odor complaint

Three passengers are suing American Airlines after alleging that company officials removed a total of eight black men from a flight due to a complaint about a passenger with body odor.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, claims that while American Airlines Flight 832 from Phoenix to New York was boarding in January, American Airlines employees removed eight black men from the plane. , allegedly because of a complaint about “offensive body odor.”

The central video of the process showed a group of black men who were not traveling together and did not know each other being removed from the flight. According to the lawsuit, they were the only black passengers on the flight.

Emmanuel Jean Joseph, Alvin Jackson and Xavier Veal – the three plaintiffs – were on a connecting flight from Los Angeles. The three allege that at no point during the other flight did any American Airlines employee tell them anything about an offensive odor.

Jean Joseph told CBS News senior transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave that as she gathered her belongings and walked to the boarding bridge, she noticed that only black men were being removed from the flight.

“I started freaking out,” Xavier Veal said. He decided to record the incident on his phone.

The lawsuit states that the men were detained on the jet bridge for about an hour and then were transferred to the gate area, where they were told they would be transferred to another flight to New York later that day. The lawsuit alleges that an American Airlines employee indicated that the body odor complaint came from a “white flight attendant.”

A gate agent seen in the video appeared to agree that race was a factor in the decision to remove the men from the flight.

When another flight to New York could not be found, the men were put back on the same plane. Jackson described the experience as uncomfortable, saying, “Everybody that was looking at me, me and every other black person on the plane, we just got off.”

“I knew that as soon as I got on that plane, a sea of ​​white faces would be looking at me and blaming me for the hour-long flight delay,” said Jean Joseph.

The attorney representing the three men, Sue Huhta, said American Airlines has refused to provide any answers to its clients about the incident and said it seems “pretty clear that race was part of this dynamic.”

“It’s almost inconceivable to find an explanation for this other than skin color, especially since they didn’t know each other and weren’t sitting next to each other,” Huhta said.

The lawsuit also cites other recent incidents in which passengers alleged discrimination by American Airlines and references a 2017 NAACP travel advisory urging members not to fly the airline, which was suspended eight months later.

CBS legal analyst Rikki Klieman said the lawsuit suggests the plaintiffs may be more interested in making a public statement about racial discrimination than financial compensation. Klieman believes the issue at trial is about American Airlines’ protocols and how it treated employees after the incident.

But Veal said he believes if it had been a white person, the situation probably would not have happened.

“We were discriminated against. The whole situation was racist,” he said.

In a statement to CBS News, American Airlines said: “We take all allegations 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 allegations do not reflect our core values ​​or our purpose of caring for people.”