An America Airlines Boeing 737 in Miami
An interracial newlywed couple said in a federal lawsuit filed last week in the Southern District of Florida that American Airlines personnel accused the black husband of trafficking his white wife.
The incident, which took place in September 2022 on an American flight from Phoenix to Miami, involved Anthony Williams, a retired police officer, and his wife, Katsiaryna Shasholka, who is white and a Russian national, according to the filing.
The newly-wedded couple alleged that another passenger raised suspicions of trafficking concerning Williams and informed the flight crew. No mention of the passenger‘s suspicions was made to them during the flight but, upon reaching Miami, police boarded the aircraft and escorted the couple off. The two, in the complaint, said they were “falsely imprisoned.”
The attorney representing the couple said that “American Airlines’ pattern of racial discrimination of its passengers is intolerable,” and emphasized that this was yet another example of racial profiling by the carrier.
American Airlines said in a statement that it was reviewing the allegations made in the complaint.
In 2017, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People warned black people in a travel advisory that they should exercise caution when traveling on American Airlines. The group cited a pattern of “disrespectful” and “discriminatory” behavior from the company after four episodes in which it was found to have discriminated against black passengers.
The NAACP said at the time that the similarities between the episodes revealed “a corporate culture of racial insensitivity and possible racial bias.” The American Airlines travel advisory came several months after the group issued a travel advisory telling blacks to avoid the state of Missouri, the first advisory of its type ever issued by the NAACP.
In December 2024, American said that it had settled a lawsuit filed by three black men who were not traveling together who contended that they had been wrongly removed from a flight earlier in the year because of a complaint about their body odor.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
If they were newlyweds at the time, that should just be in the next paragraph and not in the first and third.
