MIAMI — A passenger on an American Airlines flight to Miami assumed a white woman was a human trafficking victim of the Black man traveling with her and American Airlines employees acted on the assumption, a federal lawsuit says.

The reason there’s a lawsuit: The man and woman were a husband and wife on their honeymoon, and their lawsuit says those assumptions and actions led to them being “detained, falsely imprisoned, questioned, and humiliated.”

The lawsuit, filed by attorney Jasmine Olivia Mae Rand for clients Anthony Williams and Katiaryna Shasholka, also points out other times in the last two years where Black passengers alleged racist treatment.

As for the Williams-Shasholka lawsuit, the company said in an email to the Miami Herald, “American strives to provide a positive experience to everyone who travels with us. We are reviewing the allegations of the complaint.”

The court docket doesn’t list the attorneys for the other defendants, two flight attendants and the passenger.

The lawsuit says Arizona residents Shasholka and Williams, a retired police officer, were on an American Airlines Phoenix-to-Miami flight on Sept. 13, 2022 when another passenger told two flight attendants Williams was trafficking Shasholka.

The flight attendants, the lawsuit claims, “did not question our clients or conduct any kind of investigation, but instead falsely reported to law enforcement that [Williams] was trafficking his own wife.

“Upon landing, our clients were falsely imprisoned by American Airlines employees who escorted them off of the plane,” the lawsuit claims. “They were made to wait, confused and embarrassed, as the other passengers deplaned and walked by them, and, then, they were questioned by Miami-Dade police officers.”

The lawsuit claims the entire episode was captured on video.

Past as prologue?

In trying to show there’s a problem American hasn’t addressed with its employees, the lawsuit also brought up three recent incidents involving Black passengers.

▪ A September 2023 Atlanta to Los Angeles flight ended with musician David Ryan Harris suspected of kidnapping his own children.

Harris, a Black man, had his biracial 12-year-old and 7-year-old with him when a flight attendant suspected they weren’t Harris’ children because she didn’t think they were responsive enough when she tried to interact with them.

American Airlines issued an apology the following month, saying their policies concerning suspected human trafficking weren’t followed and “our flight attendant realizes that their interaction and observations did NOT meet the criteria that human trafficking was taking place.”

Harris’ Instagram post said, “all I was looking for was an apology and/or an explanation of policy. From the beginning, I didn’t (and still don’t) think that a slow or tentative response from a 7-year-old on an early morning flight should be enough criteria to have the authorities called.”

▪ Last month, American settled a lawsuit filed by three Black men after accusations about body odor on a Phoenix to New York-JFK flight.

The three men were among several Black men, who were not seated together, removed from the flight after boarding. The lawsuit said American employees told them they were “ordered off the plane because of a complaint about body odor. (They) were not told that they personally had body odor and, in fact, none of the plaintiffs had offensive body odor.”

American’s answer to the lawsuit admitted “that the pilot informed the remaining passengers that the delay was caused by a concern about body odor.”

The lawsuit said American tried to rebook them for an hour before allowing them back onto their original flight

“(They) then had to reboard the plane and endure the stares of the largely white passengers who viewed them as the cause of the substantial delay,” the lawsuit said. “They suffered during the entire flight home, and the entire incident was traumatic, upsetting, scary, humiliating, and degrading.”

NPR reported in June that American Airlines CEO Robert Isom wrote in a letter to employees “I am incredibly disappointed by what happened on that flight and the breakdown of our procedures.”

▪ By then, retired Illinois circuit judge Pamela Hill-Veal had gone public with what she claimed was mistreatment of her and her husband on a Chicago to Phoenix flight on Feb. 10.

Hill-Veal said after her husband refused to give up his his seat at the request of a white passenger, she was accused of slamming the door to the first class restroom and told to use the restroom at the back of the plane. When she used the first class restroom again near the end of the flight, she said the flight attendant followed her to her seat, physically touched her on a shoulder and threatened her with arrest.

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