The four friends were allegedly kicked off flight on racial grounds.
By Sreekanth A Nair
Four US citizens, including an Indian American, have filed a $9 million lawsuit against American Airlines for ousting them from a flight last month on racial grounds.
Shan Anand, a Sikh, and Faimul Alam, were on their way from Toronto to New York along with two friends – a Bangladeshi Muslim and an Arab Muslim – when they were ejected from the flight 44718, reported the Associated Press.
The four said that they were kicked off on the basis of their race.
The four friends from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, were going back home after spending one week in Canada.
They said that without any reason a gate attendant came and told them to get out of the flight. They said they suffered emotional and psychological harm from the discrimination and mistreatment meted out by American Airlines.
“They came to us and said, you know, ‘Take our belongings and exit the aircraft.’ At that point, like, everybody just around us was just, like, looking at us,” Alam said. “The way she said it wasn’t, like, low either, so it was, at least, like three rows ahead,” he added.
“It wasn’t the proper way to say it. They came to us and they told us, you know, ‘Get your belongings and exit the aircraft,” Anand said.
Two of the friends had booked their journey on another plane. But they each paid $75 to switch their flight so that they could travel back to New York together.
Two of the friends had upgraded to business class and another two had changed their seats with two strangers so that they could sit together.
But the flight officials were suspicious about this and asked them to exit the flight and the flight took off leaving them behind at the airport.
CNN reported that after the take-off, an airline agent told they could not board “because the crew members, and specifically the captain, felt uneasy and uncomfortable with their presence on the flight and as such, refused to fly unless they were removed from the flight.”
In the lawsuit filed by them in Brooklyn Federal Court, on Monday, they said that they “incurred great emotional and psychological harm from the discrimination and mistreatment.”
They demand an apology from the Airline and $9 million damages.