Israeli airline El Al has been ordered to pay a settlement to a Holocaust survivor who was asked to change her seat by a flight attendant back in 2015.
Renee Rabinowitz sued the airline when she was asked to move her seat on a 2015 El Al flight because she'd been seated next to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, who refused to sit next to a woman. Rabinowitz complied with the request at the time, but said later that it made her feel insulted.
This case, argued before Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Dana Cohen-Lekach, examined the practice of flight attendants who accommodate passengers when they ask to be reseated. According to El Al's policy, flight attendants regularly accommodate reseating requests from ultra-Orthodox men, who book tickets but refuse to sit next to women during a flight.
This issue had been a regular problem for the airline, and a petition was launched in 2014 for El Al to change its policy after one incident in which hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men refused to sit down until all of their respective seats were changed, leading to what one passenger described as an 11-hour nightmare.
The Jerusalem court ruled on Wednesday that El Al had to change its policy, though El Al made the point throughout the case that their policy applied to all accommodations, not only religion-based ones.
The New York Times reports, “In discussions outside the courtroom, the two sides in the case agreed on a judgment proposed by the judge, declaring that it is forbidden for a crew member to ask a passenger to change seats at the request of another passenger based on gender. El Al agreed to tell its cabin staff in writing about the prohibition within 45 days, and to provide training in how to deal with such situations within six months.”
This ruling addresses both the complaint of Ms. Rabinowitz as well as El Al's concern over passengers wanting to change seats for any other reason, including to sit closer to a family member.
Ms. Rabinowitz was also awarded 6500NIS, the equivalent of about $1800, though her lawyer had requested 50,000NIS ( about $14,000).