At least three passengers have alleged that American Airlines removed all Black men from a flight over a body odor complaint.

Alvin Jackson, Emmanuel Jean Joseph and Xavier Veal told CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave in an interview that they are filing a lawsuit against the airline company after they were removed from a flight from Phoenix to New York in January allegedly due to a complaint about "offensive body odor."

"It was just Black men so I started freaking out. I pulled out my phone to record everything," Veal recalled the incident, saying only Black men were forced off the plane at the time.

Jackson, Joseph, Veal and the other Black passengers were reportedly kept in the jetway for about an hour, and they were told they would be rebooked on another flight to New York later that day.

In the lawsuit they filed against the airlines, they indicated that "a different American representative told them that the complaint about offensive body odor had come from a white male flight attendant."

In the video Veal recorded of the incident, a gate agent seemed to agree that race was a factor in the men getting pulled off the flight.

"Just because of the color of my skin?" Joseph was heard asking the agent in the video.

"Correct... I do not disagree with you," the gate agent responded.

However, when another flight to New York could not be found, they said they were put back on the same plane.

"We had to go back on the plane with everybody looking at us. You know, for me [it was] very uncomfortable. Everybody was staring at me and all the other Black people on the plane were just taken off," recalled Jackson.

"I knew that as soon as I get on that plane, a sea of white faces were going to be looking at me and blaming me for their late flight of an hour," chimed in Joseph.

Meanwhile, Outten & Golden in New York, the law firm that filed the three men's lawsuit, told Atlanta Black Star that the firm did not have the contact information of the other five Black men on the same flight to include them in the lawsuit.

Like the three, they may also not have known each other prior to being asked to be removed from the flight but were only allegedly singled out because of their skin color.

The lawsuit against American Airlines was filed in federal court Wednesday.

Meanwhile, addressing the claims, the major airline issued a statement, saying: "Our teams are currently investigating the matter, as the claims do not reflect our core values or our purpose of caring for people."

Tags
Black, Lawsuit