Imagine a plane filled with 128 Green Bay Packers fans, most of them dressed in green jerseys.
Many also wear green caps sporting their team's big-G logo. Some have obnoxious yellow hats shaped like oversized wedges of cheese. They look a lot alike, especially because it's 2022 and airline passengers are still required to wear masks.
The Covid-19 pandemic has driven many air travelers mad, resulting in thousands of incidents involving unruly passengers. Flight crews are increasingly paranoid. And suddenly there are all these strange cheeseheads on a plane.
You don't share cheesehead beliefs that the Packers are God's gift to the NFL. Maybe you think finding religion in football is an idiotic sacrilege. Or maybe you're a Chicago Bears fan and you hate the Packers.
A few of these cheeseheads take off their masks and congregate in the aisles.
Instead of taking these individuals to task for flaunting the rules, the flight crew reports everyone in a green jersey to airport security. This move bans them from their connecting flight, strands them at a foreign airport, and keeps them from their precious game.
Who cares? They're a bunch of cheeseheads. They deserve what they get, especially the ones wearing bricks of fake cheese on their heads. It's not like you're from Wisconsin, where they proudly sell T-shirts that say, "Come smell our Dairy Air."
This is what happened on a Lufthansa flight in May 2022, only the 128 passengers were not cheeseheads in green jerseys, they were Jews in black, Orthodox garb.
The airline couldn't identify a single individual who broke the rules. It simply banned everyone in black hats and dark suits from their connecting flight.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation slapped Lufthansa with a record $4 million fine for this discrimination.
Maybe you had a coach who made everyone run laps because of the shortcomings of a single teammate. Or maybe you had a teacher who made everyone stay after school because one classmate shot a spitball. Or worse, maybe you work for a boss who dashed everyone's bonuses because one team member didn't make the quota.
Unfortunately, it is human nature to punish entire classes of people for the sins of a few.
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Some protestors are violent. Should we jail the ones who are peaceful?
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Some immigrants cross borders illegally. Should we deport the ones who came here legitimately?
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Some cops are killers. Should we defund law enforcement agencies everywhere?
We can make a long list of this folly: Some Muslims are terrorists. Some Blacks are gang members. Some priests are pedophiles. Some Democrats are socialists. Some Republicans are fascists. And to my mind, some Green Bay Packers fans need to bag their cheesehead skullcaps because they look stupid and can obstruct views of the game.
We all have our prejudices. It's wrong when we act on them, and it's a travesty when major companies can't rise above them.
Jews have been targets of discrimination since antiquity, but is has become surprisingly fashionable to hate them today. Antisemitic incidents have risen to record levels following the onset of the Israeli-Hamas War last year.
On college campuses, Jewish students live in fear of pro-Palestinian protestors. Synagogues have upped security amid bomb threats. Jews have suffered violent attacks, and law enforcement authorities warn of more to come.
Not all Jews are responsible for the horrors in the Middle East. Not all Jews support the right-wing policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Not all Jews are OK with civilian casualties. Not all Jews killed Jesus.
At this point in history, it's a really bad look for Germany's largest airline to be sanctioned for this kind of discrimination. It doesn't help perceptions that a video captured Lufthansa staff saying "everyone has to pay" for the alleged transgressions of a few passengers they could not even identify.
Lufthansa issued an apology following the 2022 incident: "We have zero tolerance for racism, antisemitism and discrimination of any type."
This week, the carrier issued another statement saying it cooperated with the Transportation Department's investigation and partnered with the American Jewish Committee to address antisemitism and discrimination. "Lufthansa is dedicated to being an ambassador of goodwill, tolerance, diversity, and acceptance," it said.
This should go without saying in an industry that is heavily subsidized by the taxpaying public.
"No one should face discrimination when they travel. ... We will continue to push the industry to serve passengers with the fairness and dignity they deserve." - U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
Lufhansa's crew treated these customers as a group, but like a horde of Packers fans getting on a shuttle bus, these people did not even know each other, the Transportation Department found.
They simply had a common destination: A memorial event to honor an Orthodox rabbi in Hungary. They had tickets to fly from New York to Frankfurt, Germany, where they would catch a connecting flight to Budapest, Hungary.
Following the incident, The New York Times interviewed two Orthodox Jews who were permitted to board the connecting flight to Budapest while all the others were turned away. They did not stand out because they wore causal clothes.
They said the plane took off with about 20 passengers, and that they were perhaps the only two Jews on the plane.
The flight crew then announced that everyone could have as many kosher meals as they wanted - the Jews' loss being everyone's gain.
"Right away, all these images, movies, books that we read about 1939 to 1944 jumped up and a lot of these images are now running through our head," one of the Jewish passengers told the Times.
[Read the consent order here.]
Al Lewis has written for The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, CNBC, Houston Chronicle, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, and until recently, The Messenger - one of the biggest blunders in digital media history - you can read My Latest Blunder (The Messenger) here in case you missed it. Subscribe to Al's Business Blunders Newsletter to keep up with the most spectacular business blunders as they, inevitably, arise. >