| Magazine Feature |

Airlines Unmasked

By Yochonon Donn | April 14, 2021

Turbulence Ahead: Are the skies less friendly to Observant Jews?

Illustrations by Esti Friedman

The thin piece of colored cloth that accompanies virtually every COVID regulation on the ground has created some atmospheric pressure in the formerly friendly skies as well.

Flight attendant crews, once limited to reminding passengers to fasten seatbelts and pouring out frothy cups of warm Diet Coke, have now been handed their roughest job yet — ensuring that every passenger, every second of the time, has every part of their lower face covered.

Given that this directive has led to an increasing number of complaints by Orthodox Jews who feel they’ve been unfairly targeted for enforcement, should families think twice before they fly? Or should they give more consideration when choosing an airline?

Three times over the past two months, Jewish social media was flooded with viral videos of heimish families being tossed off an aircraft for alleged lack of compliance. And according to attorney Michael Inzelbuch, who represents one of the families, there are at least double that number of incidents that did not result in an official complaint or video evidence.

“I’ve had six people call me over the past few days with complaints that they were discriminated against for mask noncompliance while flying on Spirit Airlines,” Inzelbuch told Mishpacha.

The skirmishes that were made public happened on a major airline (Delta), mid-cap (Frontier), and budget (Spirit). Because all the cases happened during flights from Florida to the Tristate area, Judy Tenenbaum, corporate travel consultant at the Lakewood-based Plane Talk travel agency, says she knows of many families with young children who drove to Florida for Pesach rather than risk a confrontation over mask-wearing.

“It’s mostly the cheaper airlines where these things happen,” says Tenenbaum, who focuses on international travel and whose customers were not affected by the recent stories. “There are laws on the books that they can take advantage of if they want to be mean and nasty. But there’s really no solution.”

Assemblyman Daniel Rosenthal said he was in contact with the families from both the Spirit and Frontier flights. The Queens Democrat drafted a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the bistate agency that runs the region’s airports, demanding action to prevent more discrimination.

“The reason we did this letter,” Rosenthal says, “is because it’s already more than one or two airlines, so it’s already a trend we’re seeing and a trend we want to stop in its tracks. That’s why we are asking the appropriate government agencies to investigate, to hold these airlines responsible for their actions.”

The letter was also signed by Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, a Brooklyn Democrat who chairs the committee that oversees state authorities such as the Port Authority, State Senator Simcha Felder, and Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein.

“Widely circulated video evidence has shown Jewish families being removed from flights for lack of mask usage from a toddler or a child under two years of age, despite being in full compliance of federal guidelines,” stated the letter. “As anti-Semitic incidents and hate crimes continue to rise in our state, these occurrences are deeply troubling. Any action involving alleged discrimination requires an immediate remedy to ensure no further incidents occur.”

The FAA has established general COVID-generated guidelines, while leaving leeway for airlines to adopt their own rules. Spirit Airlines, for example, exempts children under two and any special needs person from wearing a mask.

Rosenthal says he partially blames media caricatures of the Orthodox community throughout COVID as uncaring for human life and heedless of regulations.

“It should not be news,” he says, “that a community singled out, and in many cases unfairly targeted, by certain publications, would lead to this kind of discrimination.”

“Well-Done”

The first incident of mask-related harassment took place a few days before Purim on a Delta flight, when a small group of family members accompanied on a flight a 70-year-old man who had gone to Florida to recover from heart surgery.

One of the passengers, Yossi, who spoke on condition that neither he nor any member of his party be named, blamed the episode on a female passenger who joined them in first-class. Because the man was in a wheelchair, he was offered the opportunity to board first. As he was going up, Yossi alleged, the woman glared at him and said, “The Jews always get away with this stuff.” The woman then carried on a long, animated conversation with the flight attendant, pointing repeatedly at the group of Orthodox men.

Shortly before takeoff, the 70-year-old man lifted his mask to eat something. The flight attendant rushed over to him and immediately ordered him off the aircraft, not even offering the chance for him to rectify his indiscretion.

“They told him right away, ‘get off, get off,’ Yossi said. “When we asked why, they said they’ll explain once we are off.” The woman who agitated against the group, Yossi said, began jeering, “Shame on you, you’re a rabbi, look how you act.”

Mortified, and seeking to avoid more negative attention, the group deplaned. They were subsequently notified that the man was being issued a warning in lieu of a $14,000 fine since he was a first-time offender, and would be banned from all Delta flights for two years. A second offense, the letter advised, would lead to a full flight ban on any airline.

The elderly gentleman, Yossi said, was “very broken” by the entire incident. The group ended up taking a Spirit flight home and are still weighing their legal options.

“We have a case,” Yossi said, “but in the meantime we aren’t taking any legal action. It’s not worth the headache just for financial compensation.”

On the Sunday before Pesach, another incident was reported. A packed Frontier Airlines flight carrying an extended Orthodox Jewish family of 21 members from Miami to New York was canceled after the airline insisted that a one-year-old baby wear a mask. The CDC guidelines do not require anyone under the age of two to mask up.

Frontier claimed that the incident happened because “a large group” of adults refused to wear masks. Eyewitnesses, backed by a voluminous amount of video evidence, however, said that anti-Semitism sparked the flare-up. They noted that all members of the extended family had been wearing masks, and they pointed to anti-Semitic remarks made by a flight attendant as evidence that there was more to the story than mere masks. As the passengers were getting off the plane, airline employees high-fived one another, with passengers reporting that they overheard one saying, “a job well done to those Jews.”

By the next morning, the airline was facing accusations of anti-Semitism, as well as demands for an investigation from the Anti-Defamation League and other groups.

The conflict began sometime before departure, when three of the couples were ordered off the plane for not obeying the mask rule. The 15-month-old child was seen being carried through the aisle by his father and sucking on a pacifier. But several of their relatives advised them to remain, pointing out that they had been wearing masks. Soon, about a dozen law enforcement officers boarded and instructed six of the Jews to deplane. In response, the entire family said they would leave the plane. Chaos then erupted and Frontier ultimately decided to cancel the entire flight.

The family arrived in New York later that night on a different airline.

“Where’s the Mask?”

The latest incident happened last week on Monday, as the Eisenberg family of Toms River was belting themselves in for the flight home after spending Pesach in Orlando. Ari and Avital were with their seven-year-old son Daniel, who is autistic, and two-year-old daughter Esther.

In a Zoom press conference later that week, Avital said that a flight steward named Daryl Parker confronted her as soon as she stepped onto the aircraft, pointing to Daniel and asking her, “Where is his mask?” She explained that although she fully expected to have him wear a face covering during the flight, she added that he was nonverbal and extremely developmentally-delayed. He was also prone to seizures so she would need to take it off from time to time for his well-being.

“He looked at me with a completely blank face,” Mrs. Eisenberg recalled, “and said, ‘I asked you where’s his mask.’ I was so taken aback.”

The family’s attorney, Michael Inzelbuch, said that both federal rules and airlines regulations allow special needs children not to wear masks.

The confrontation boiled over when another flight attendant noticed Esther, the toddler, eating a yogurt without a mask and walked over. Sensing that she might have been instructed to escalate the conflict, Ari Eisenberg motioned to someone to begin videotaping the interaction. Indeed, the flight attendant immediately ordered the family off the plane.

“Tell me what I did wrong,” Ari challenged.

“The pilot wants you off,” she responded, then pointed to Esther and said, “It’s your child.”

The Eisenbergs sat down and refused to leave, leading the pilot to deplane the entire flight. Avital Eisenberg said that the police standing outside were very understanding of her situation, with an officer even going to retrieve a syringe for Daniel to take his anti-seizure medicine. After a quick review of the case, the airline promptly ordered the flight back on, allowing the Eisenbergs to board with the rest of the passengers. Daryl, however, was spotted leaving the scene with his bag, apparently no longer assigned to the flight.

The Eisenbergs say that they want an apology, as well as a clear policy on how the airlines will train staff to handle special-needs children.

As of press time, Spirit has not replied to a request for clarification.

“No one should ever understand what it is like to raise such a child,” said Mrs. Eisenberg. “He’s my life, I love him to death, but preparing for such a flight requires literally hours of work… I have never ever felt the way I did on that flight.”

“We are not asking for boycotts, we are not asking for marches,” noted Inzelbuch, who also serves as the Lakewood Board of Education attorney. “We are asking for two words — ‘I’m sorry.’ This cannot happen to any family who has a special needs child.”

Spirit Airlines has so far dug in. It first posted a statement on Twitter blaming the parents for not adhering to its mask policy, taking it down a while later after users pointed out the video showed them wearing face coverings the entire time. They then posted a second statement claiming that staff asked “the adults in the party multiple times to comply with that requirement, which happened prior to videos that have been widely shared. We were pleased that they eventually complied and traveled on the flight as planned.”

Inzelbuch initially gave Spirit a deadline by midnight on Thursday for the apology. The airline did not respond by that time, he said.

“People have been asking me all week whether they should fly Spirit,” he said. “And my response is, ‘I’m not sure. It’s a big savings, but if you’re Orthodox and have a special needs child…’”

The Worst Scenario

There’s the old proverb that to a carpenter, every problem is a nail and every solution is a hammer. Asked what a passenger’s first recourse should be if a mask demand escalates out of control and they are ordered off the plane, Assemblyman Rosenthal says the passenger should contact his elected official. Attorney Inzelbuch says they should contact their lawyer. But Feivish Michalowitz, owner of GPS Travel based in Spring Valley, advises people to keep the atmosphere from getting tense.

“I always tell my customers, ‘Make sure that whatever you do, it doesn’t get out of control. Because once it gets out of hand we are already at the next step, and sometimes it’s already a lost case. Try to resolve it on the spot, even though you feel you’re being discriminated against because you’re an Orthodox Jew.’ ”

For those who feel they can’t wear a mask, he counsels to don it anyhow, at least until the plane is in the air.

“Once you’re in the air, the worst case is that you will be questioned by airline staff after you land,” Michalowitz notes. “By that time you can already work it out. All these stories happened before takeoff. If you wear a mask until after takeoff, you’ll be fine.”

If the worst outcome happens and someone is ordered off, the travel agent suggested they approach the airline staff at the airport and try to work it out there before threatening legal action.

Assemblyman Rosenthal says that passengers in trouble should “realize that all eyes are on you, you have to act respectfully and make a kiddush Hashem. If anything happens, you should call your local elected official, who should be contacting the various government organizations that are supposed to help if the airline does anything wrong.”

Inzelbuch stressed that passengers still have rights, and they should use them. “So what are you supposed to do?” he asks rhetorically. “Well, the first thing you are supposed to do is wear a mask. But when a flight attendant tells you to get off the plane, you ask, ‘Can you please tell me what I did wrong?’ And then — I am not a rosh yeshivah — you should say a kapitel Tehillim. Then, no, you should not get off the plane. You do not want to make a scene, you do not want to make a chillul Hashem. What you should do is get someone to video you.

“About calling ahead that you have a special-needs child, federal law frowns upon that because they aren’t supposed to be treated differently,” the lawyer added. “But due to what happened on the Spirit flight, it’s evident that parents of special needs children need to do what the Eisenbergs did: Explain the situation candidly prior to the flight. But I wouldn’t say parents of a special needs child have to call ahead.”

Targeted?

Michalowitz of GPS Travel says he’s booked “a few hundred” tickets to Florida since Succos and none of his customers said that they’ve been targeted for mask noncompliance. He estimated that “thousands, if not tens of thousands” of people flew to Florida for Pesach, making the number of actual mask clashes pretty low. He suggested three reasons that these cases generated that much publicity.

According to Michalowitz, a Delta Air Lines representative to a group of frum salesmen told them a year ago that he can see Orthodox Jews being targeted about mask-wearing.

“He said, ‘You Jews are going to be the first ones back in flight,’ and it’s true. The highest percentage of people traveling with families these days are chassidishe Yidden, so obviously it keeps on happening to us because we have the most children on flights. Also, if it happens to a heimishe Yid, he makes sure that it flies around social media. It goes around to the whole community, and it gets to the news sites, and from there it goes out to the public.”

Haindel Breuer, who works in the real estate and construction industries and is a frequent flier, says that these stories happen to people in other communities as well.

“I was on a flight this week from LaGuardia to Richmond, Virginia, and we were delayed one hour because a non-Jewish person didn’t want to wear a mask,” says Breuer. “I guess we hear more of the Florida stories because so many Jewish families go to Florida.”

Yossi Gestetner, a founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council that battles anti-Semitism in the media, says it’s hard to pinpoint where aggressive mask enforcement ends and anti-Semitism begins, since the lines are very blurred.

“I can’t check on the motive of every airline staffer who abuses people in general and especially Orthodox Jews,” says Gestetner, who was the one who first tweeted out the video of the family ousted from the Frontier flight. “But the whole mask business is one in which flight attendants with very limited influence or say in the past are suddenly king over a group of people — the passengers — and I think that some of them just abuse it. The problem is there is no way to adjudicate these things.”

He advises people to listen carefully to what airlines say since the carriers have a tremendous amount of leeway when it comes to who can fly with them, and police will in almost every case side with them. “They’re not school principals trying to settle a fight between two boys,” he said.

Inzelbuch says the key is to be extra careful and courteous. “We live in galus, and we have to be extra careful,” he says. And remember, there are still people out there who are deathly afraid of the virus, even though in our communities we’ve essentially gathered our losses and moved past it. But the bottom line is, are Jews being targeted? Inzelbuch is pretty clear on that one. “I believe the Eisenbergs were.”

THE AIRLINES ARE PUSHED TO THE WALL

A conversation with CHARLIE DADOUN, a veteran pilot with United Airlines

Is there a breakdown in trust between airline personnel and passengers?

The airlines all have public relations departments and spokespeople, but they aren’t very responsive right now, because the rules keep changing. They’re constantly forced to update and adapt, and it’s difficult for them.

As a veteran pilot, do you believe there is a “profile” of the Orthodox Jew?

There’s a profile for everyone by everyone. As much as the corporate position will be that all passengers are equal, the employees on the ground relate differently to different people.

Do you consider that fair?

I think that greater training and sensitivity awareness would help, but what’s not okay is when employees show up to work with their own personal issues affecting the way they treat people, transmitting their own stress onto the clients. That said, United — where I’m employed — has no tolerance for prejudice or bigotry in the workplace.

Do you think the mask policies are smart and safe?

This is my own view: We’re loaded with hypocrisy. Again, it’s my own view. The problems start with the government pushing the airline to enforce harsh rules. Kicking a two-year child off a plane for noncompliance isn’t acceptable by any means.

Do pilots have to wear masks?

We do until the cockpit door closes, and then it’s a personal decision. The FAA’s priority is that we be able to communicate clearly with each other and the tower.

Do pilots enforce rules?

I was asked to enforce the mask rule once when the flight attendants couldn’t get it done. The passenger was a doctor, seated in first-class, and I approached with a smile. I asked him how his day was going.

“We have a dilemma,” I told him, “you and I are in the same boat. We both know too much about mask effectiveness and reliability, but my concern is that if you don’t wear the mask, we’ll have a mini-revolt from the other passengers. Can I ask you to wear it for the sake of peace?” We both laughed, and it was fine.

IT’S A BUILDUP OF MISTRUST

A conversation with ZVI GLUCK, CEO of Amudim

Do you think that the airlines are profiling Orthodox passengers?

As a chaplain for the Port Authority, I’m used to receiving complaints about people being profiled and pulled over for looking Jewish. I used to joke about it, but there is no doubt that over the last few months, it’s become more serious.

Why?

It’s a buildup of mistrust and frustration. The mistrust comes from the perception that our community hasn’t taken COVID as seriously as others have, a storyline the media has been pushing, and for sure, we have to be especially careful to show sensitivity in that regard. There is also tremendous frustration on the part of airline personnel, because no single industry has been as hard hit by COVID as theirs. They have endured severe layoffs, ever-changing regulations and even those staff that held on to their jobs had to accept pay cuts. It’s very stressful, so even before you board a flight, there’s tension.

When a flight attendant tells someone to deplane, it doesn’t just affect one person. It’s an instant delay while the passengers leave and the baggage crew gets to work locating the luggage and removing it from the plane. It takes a long time. It affects the scheduling of the flight, and by extension, other flights. It’s a mess, and it’s born of frustration and mistrust.

What should air travelers know about masking up?

Children under two years old do not have to wear a mask. Children with special needs are likewise exempt from wearing a mask. If you’re eating or drinking, your mask can be up.

What should someone do if he feels he’s being unfairly targeted by the flight crew?

If you or someone next to you is being treated wrongly, try to video as much as you can. Take notes. Try to gather the contact info of the other passengers who are witnesses as well, because it will prove helpful.

After the fact, the first step is to file a formal complaint with the airline, and then with the FAA. The airline won’t do much, but the FAA will want to see that you followed the correct protocol. If the passenger endured loss, either of time or in another area, he should speak to a lawyer and review his options.

Do some airlines have better records with this issue than others?

Look, anti-Semitism isn’t a new issue. It’s been around forever. Now, racism is in style — currently it’s anti-Asian bigotry, but we’re always part of it, and it’s not always the flight crew. Sometimes it’s other passengers who start making noise. That said, with regard to airline training, JetBlue, for example, has been better than others. They have invested in sensitivity training, and it shows. Spirit has not.