A group of teenaged Jewish girls who were kicked off two KLM/Delta flights in Amsterdam last summer and say they were harassed on other flights filed suit this week against the airline, alleging antisemitic discrimination.
“After spending two weeks on a religious and educational tour to pay tribute to their Jewish heritage, to remember the atrocities of the Holocaust, and to honor the millions of Jewish families who perished or whose lives were destroyed at the hands of antisemitic murderers, Plaintiffs suffered a devastating reminder at the hands of Delta Airlines and KLM Airlines that anti-Semitism and discrimination against the Jewish race continues in 2021,” says the complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York.
The 19 plaintiffs, mostly from New York, were part of a larger group of more than 50 girls and chaperones who participated in a tour of Jewish sites in Europe last July and August.
The group alleges that following their initial flight from New York to Amsterdam in late July, they were given warnings that they had “not behaved” and that they had better “behave” on their next flight, a connecting trip to Vienna. The group says they were never told they had been misbehaving, and did not receive any explanation for the nature of their alleged misbehaving. The pilot on the flight from Amsterdam to Vienna then allegedly warned them, “I don’t really want to take you. But I’m being forced to … if you misbehave, I’ll make an emergency landing.”
Following their two-week tour in Europe, the girls flew from Kyiv to Amsterdam, for a connecting flight to New York.
The complaint alleges that on the Kyiv-Amsterdam flight, the group was warned that they must wear masks following in-flight service — despite all the girls having been compliant with mask regulations. During the flight, some girls took out their own kosher…