A British-Israeli woman is suing easyJet for £15,000 after they made her move seats twice because ultra-Orthodox Jewish men refused to sit next to a female passenger.
Melanie Wolfson, 38, is claiming 66,438 shekels compensation from the low-cost airline in a lawsuit filed on her behalf by the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC).
Ms Wolfson, a professional fundraiser from Tel Aviv, is also asking that easyJet bans its cabin crew from asking women to switch seats because of their gender.
According to the lawsuit, Ms Wolfson paid extra for an isle seat on a flight to London last October. An ultra-Orthodox man and his son, who were sitting in the row when she arrived, asked her to switch seats with a man a few rows ahead.
Ms Wolfson said she was ‘insulted and humiliated’ by the request. ‘It was the first time in my adult life that I was discriminated against for being a woman,’ she told Haaretz in a telephone conversation.
Melanie Wolfson, 38, is claiming 66,438 shekels compensation from the low-cost airline in a lawsuit filed on her behalf by the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC)
Ms Wolfson, a professional fundraiser from Tel Aviv, is also asking that easyJet bans its cabin crew from asking women to switch seats because of their gender (stock)
‘I would not have had any problem whatsoever switching seats if it were to allow members of a family or friends to sit together, but the fact that I was being asked to do this because I was a woman was why I refused.’
She added: ‘What was even more infuriating was that there were passengers watching this happen who said nothing.’
A flight attendant eventually intervened and offered Ms Wolfson a free hot drink as an incentive to move. Concerned that the flight might be delayed on her account and feeling that she had little choice in the matter, she agreed to switch seats.
‘There were passengers watching this happen who said nothing,’ she said.
According to the suit, several flight attendants told Ms Wolfson that women were often asked to switch seats in order to accommodate ultra-Orthodox men.
Just over a month later, she lodged an official complaint with easyJet, arguing that requests she move seats because of her gender was discriminatory.
Although easyJet is not based in Israel, lawyers will argue that the airline was subject to Israeli law while its plane was on the ground at Ben-Gurion International Airport
Two months later, on another easyJet flight to London, Ms Wolfson was again asked to move seats by two ultra-Orthodox men.
Though she refused their request, two female passengers agreed to change seats with the two men sitting next to her, according to the suit.
Members of the cabin crew allegedly did not intervene or defend her right to stay seated where she was although again she was offered a free hot drink.
Ms Wolfson complained to easyJet on both occasions but when it failed to respond, she decided to sue for violation of Israeli law, which prohibits discrimination against customers on the basis of race, religion, nationality, land of origin, gender, sexual orientation, political views or personal status.
Although easyJet is not based in Israel, lawyers will argue that the airline was subject to Israeli law while its plane was on the ground at Ben-Gurion International Airport.
A spokeswoman for easyJet said: ‘We take claims of this nature very seriously. Whilst it would be inappropriate to comment, as this matter is currently the subject of legal proceedings, we do not discriminate on any grounds.’
In 2017, IRAC won a groundbreaking case against El Al for Renee Rabinowitz, a Holocaust survivor and lawyer in her eighties who was pressured by flight attendants to move seats because of an ultra-Orthodox man who refused to sit next to her.
Ms Rabinowitz, 82, won 6,500 shekels in compensation from El Al. The Israeli judge hearing the case said that ‘under absolutely no circumstances can a crew member ask a passenger to move from their designated seat because the adjacent passenger doesn’t want to sit next to them due to their gender’.
At the time, IRAC said almost 7,500 emails had been sent to El Al by members of the public objecting to requests made to female passengers to change seats.