Month: May 2024

Three Black men are suing American Airlines after alleging employees from the company removed them, as well as five other Black men, from a flight in January due to a complaint about a passenger with “offensive body odor.”

The three men — Emmanuel Jean Joseph, Alvin Jackson and Xavier Jones — were flying separately and did not know one another, and were on a connecting flight from Los Angeles..  The plaintiffs said in their complaint, filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, that as American Airlines Flight 832 from Phoenix to New York was boarding in January, employees removed eight Black men from the plane. The three allege that at no point throughout the other flight did any employee from American Airlines say anything to them about an offensive odor, and according to their lawsuit, they were the only Black passengers on the flight.

Video central to the lawsuit displayed the group of Black men being removed from the flight, with Jean Joseph telling CBS News that as he gathered his belongings and walked to the jet bridge, he noticed that only Black men were being removed from the flight and decided to record the incident on his phone. The lawsuit claims that the men were held in the jetway for about an hour and then moved to the gate area where they were told they would be rebooked on another flight to New York later that day. A gate agent seen in the video at one point seemed to agree that race was a factor in the decision to remove the men from the flight. According to the lawsuit, an American Airlines employee indicated that the complaint about body odor came from a “white male flight attendant.”

Sue Huhta, attorney for the plaintiffs, said that American Airlines declined to provide her clients any answers about the incident and said it seems “fairly apparent that race was part of this dynamic …It’s almost inconceivable to come up with an explanation for that other than the color of their skin, particularly since they didn’t know each other and weren’t sitting near each other.”

American Airlines said in a statement to CBS News: “we take all claims of discrimination very seriously and want our customers to have a positive experience when they choose to fly with us. Our teams are currently investigating the matter, as the claims do not reflect our core values or our purpose of caring for people.”

Editorial credit: Philip Pilosian / Shutterstock.com

On Wednesday, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a “Do Not Drive” alert for nearly 84,000 Nissan-made vehicles produced between 2002-2006 that were equipped with defective, recalled Takata airbags.

The warning covers certain model year 2002-2006 Nissan Sentras, 2002-2004 Nissan Pathfinders and 2002-2003 Infiniti QX4s that are subject to open Takata airbag recalls under past NHTSA recall campaigns. Recall notices from the NHTSA stated that a vehicle’s frontal passenger airbag inflators may explode due to “propellant degradation occurring after long-term exposure to high absolute humidity, high temperatures, and high temperature cycling.” According to a news release, the NHTSA “is urging all vehicle owners to immediately check to see if their vehicle has an open Takata airbag recall,” and if so, should schedule a free repair at their dealerships and follow warnings from the manufacturer. NHTSA’s press release added that “even minor crashes can result in exploding Takata airbags that can kill or produce life-altering, gruesome injuries. Older model year vehicles put their occupants at higher risk, as the age of the airbag is one of the contributing factors.”

Nissan said on its website: “Due to the age of the vehicles equipped with defective Takata airbag inflators, there is an increased risk the inflator could explode during an airbag deployment, propelling sharp metal fragments which can cause serious injury or death.” Nissan and Infiniti are offering free towing, mobile repair and, in some places, loaner vehicles.

An estimated 67 million Takata airbags across vehicles from multiple automakers have been recalled because exposure over time to heat and humidity can cause metal parts inside the air bag to shoot out at drivers or passengers when deployed, according to NHTSA, who added that 27 people have been killed by a defective Takata airbag and over 400 people have been injured. Approximately 50 million defective Takata airbag inflators had been repaired as of 2021.

Editorial credit: Jonathan Weiss / Shutterstock.com