American Airlines suspends employees involved in removing black men from flight over ‘offensive body odor’ amid plummeting stock price, with CEO vowing to ‘regain trust’

Several American Airlines employees were suspended following a humiliating incident in January when every black man was removed from a plane before takeoff after an worker accused them of emitting body odor.

However, the eight Black men were scattered throughout the plane and didn’t even know one another and even be seated together once they were singled out one after the other by a flight attendant, whose name was not made public.

According to a lawsuit filed last month by three black men who exchanged contact information in the course of the flight, it was only after they got off the plane that an American Airlines worker informed them that “someone had complained about body odor.” incident.

When Black men accused the airline of racial discrimination, an worker outside the plane responded, “I agree, I agree,” but did nothing to correct the situation, according to a lawsuit filed by Alvin Jackson, Emmanuel Jean Joseph and Xavier Veal, all they live in New York.

American Airlines told the men that they’d be placed on a separate flight, but after an hour this was impossible, so that they were allowed to return to the unique plane, where they’d to endure the stares and glances of white passengers who were informed that the delay in takeoff was due to the men’s men with unpleasant body odor.

However, the lawsuit states that neither man had any body odor. The lawsuit says the incident occurred at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona during a stopover from Los Angeles to New York, where the men live.

“They suffered throughout the flight home and the entire incident was traumatic, distressing, terrifying, humiliating and degrading,” the lawsuit says.

Reaction

Since the lawsuit was filed on May 29, American Airlines shares dropped by two dollars, from over $13 per share, where it remained year-to-date, to just over $11 per share, where it remained for nearly a month.

Then on June 4, the NAACP issued a press release accusing American Airlines of showing a pattern of racist incidents going back a few years and threatened to issue one other travel advisory advising Black people to avoid flying on American Airlines, because the organization did in 2017 in the wake of a series of high-profile incidents against black passengers.

Now American Airlines CEO Robert Isom is describing the most recent incident as “unacceptable” and vowing to take motion to “regain trust.”

“I am incredibly disappointed by what occurred on this flight and the violation of our procedures,” Isom said in his letter to employees on June 18. NPR who received a replica. “In this incident, we failed to honor our commitments and let our customers down.”

However, American Airlines said the identical thing in 2017 when the NAACP issued a travel advisory that ultimately lasted nine months and the incidents continued.

According to NAACP Statement:

According to NPR, Isom’s letter includes the next guarantees:

• Establishing an advisory group that can deal with improving the travel experience for Black customers,
• Reviewing and improving the corporate’s internal reporting process for allegations of discrimination or bias.
• Re-evaluate your policies, practices, protocols and organizational culture to recognize and discover areas for growth and improvement.
• And educating its employees to “recognize and eliminate bias and discrimination.”

American Airlines has developed a nasty status amongst passengers of all races and ethnicities and was named the least reliable airline in the world by Forbes.

Previous events

One of probably the most recent incidents occurred earlier this yr and involved a retired Black judge who claims in an April 2024 lawsuit that an American Airlines flight attendant told her to “use the restroom at the end of the plane” although she and her family had not booked tickets firstclass.

Last yr, a black mother filed a lawsuit against American Airlines after her 14-year-old son died of a heart attack on a flight from Honduras to Miami when the airline’s defibrillator failed since it was not properly charged.

Another incident involved a disabled black man who was traveling from Indianapolis to St. Louis when the airline lost his prosthetic leg, which he had checked in with his luggage. Michael Williams said he tried for 3 years to get reimbursed for his prosthetic leg but only received $600, although it cost him $26,500.

“To the point where I don’t want to fly,” Williams said on the time. “I feel like if I fly again, what if I have to fly in a wheelchair and this time they lose my wheelchair. They tell me, “We lost your electric wheelchair, but well, there’s nothing we can do about it.” So what are you doing?”

The NAACP’s 2017 travel advisory was issued per week after activist and co-chair of the Women’s March on New York, Tamika Mallory, was removed from an American Airlines flight following an altercation she had with a gate agent after her seat was reassigned, which she described the New York Post as “white male aggression.”

Another pre-travel advisory incident occurred in 2016 involving William Barber, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, who was thrown off a plane after complaining about two drunk white passengers sitting behind him and talking loudly to one another. According to Barber’s lawsuit, a police officer was called to escort him off the plane after a white passenger told a flight attendant he didn’t like “those people.”

After the NAACP issued a travel advisory in October 2017, then-American Airlines CEO Doug Parker issued a press release similar to what the present CEO said in his recent letter.

“We do not and will not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” Parker said on the time. “We have reached out to the NAACP and are happy to meet with them to hear their issues and concerns.”