Yossi Adler, his wife Jennie Adler, and their 19 month old daughter, were kicked off an American Airlines flight on Wednesday night when returning home to Detroit from a vacation in Miami.
They were allegedly kicked off the plane because other passengers complained of their body odor. Meanwhile the family claimed that they were being discriminated against for being Jewish.
On both sides there aren’t many supporting facts here. That’s to say that the supervisor doesn’t clarify who allegedly smelled, and at the same time the passengers don’t explain why they think they were discriminated against for being Jewish (like, did someone make an anti-semitic comment, or…?).
The passenger took video footage of his confrontation with an American Airlines supervisor after being removed from the plane:
What an odd interaction. He says “there is a religious reason for some reason that they’re kicking me off the plane.” Then a moment later the supervisor asks “now you told me for religious reasons you don’t shower, is that what you said?” He responds “No I didn’t! I shower every day. I said you kicked me off because of religious reasons.”
The guy also goes up to other people in the terminal and asks them if they think he smells. Maybe I’m too socially awkward in this way, but even if someone smelled like a dumpster I wouldn’t tell them if they came up to me with a camera in my face and asked me.
Here’s a news report interviewing them, to give you a sense of their side of the story:
Meanwhile American Airlines issued the following statement:
“Mr. Adler and his wife were removed from the flight when several passengers complained about their body odor. They were booked into a hotel for the night, given meal vouchers and rebooked on a flight.”
A further issue here is that the passengers claim that American promised they’d offload their bags so they’d have them for the overnight, though the supervisor claims that they made no such promise. So they were left without their belongings for the night.
Bottom line
We’ll never fully know what happened here.
On one hand, if several other passengers complained about their smell, they must have smelled really bad. Like, really bad, because it’s one thing if a seatmate complains, but people in other rows? But in a way I question if that was actually the case and there were several complaints, or if it was just their seatmate who complained of odors.
They were also traveling with a toddler, which makes this situation even worse for them.
As far as the claim that they were kicked off for being Jewish, no doubt discrimination still exists. I don’t want to dismiss that, but at the same time they don’t provide any explanation of why they think they were discriminated against, so I have a hard time putting much weight on that.
What do you make of this situation?
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