Eight men were kicked off a flight over alleged “offensive body odor,” according to a lawsuit
Three African-American passengers are suing American Airlines over what they described as “blatant and egregious race discrimination” by the carrier after they were removed from a flight along with five other black men, the media reported on Wednesday.
The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in the US District Court of New York, claims that American Airlines employees removed eight black men from the plane over a complaint about “offensive body odor.”
The suit also alleges that the plaintiffs – Alvin Jackson, Emmanuel Jean Joseph and Xavier Veal – and five other African-American male passengers were removed from the plane “without any valid reason, based solely on their race,” according to the complaint.
The three men, who were reportedly not seated together and did not know each other, said that every black man was removed from the January 5 flight from Phoenix, Arizona, to New York.
“American Airlines singled us out for being Black, embarrassed us, and humiliated us,” the men said in a joint statement on Wednesday.
The lawsuit claims that none of the plaintiffs were told that they had an offensive smell, “and in fact none of the plaintiffs had offensive body odor.”
Cell phone footage taken by some of the men displayed a group of black people at the gate being removed from the flight. Another video shows the men questioning the airline’s decision, with one man saying, “so this is discrimination.”