New Delhi: A recent lawsuit alleged that United Airlines, a US-based carrier, demonstrates a preference for specific attributes and age groups when choosing flight attendants for charter flights serving professional and college sports teams. As per the the Los Angeles Times, two flight attendants from United Airlines claim in the lawsuit that they were not selected for assignments on charter flights for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team because the players prefer a “certain look” of “white, young, thin women who are predominantly blond and blue-eyed.”
Dawn Todd, aged 50, and Darby Quezada, aged 44, allege that they were passed over and subsequently excluded from these flights in preference for female colleagues described as “young and thin.”
As per the Los Angeles Times, a lawsuit filed on October 25 in Los Angeles County Superior Court reveals that both women alleged harassment and/or discrimination related to race, national origin, religion, and age concerning the staffing of United’s charter flights for the Dodgers and their interactions with coworkers during those flights.
According to the lawsuit Todd and Quezada, with over 15 years of service at United, have invested more than a decade striving to be part of the airline’s program that handles staffing for Dodgers’ flights. These assignments provide attendants with compensation up to three times higher than regular assignments, attributed to longer flight durations and extra perks.
“Plaintiffs had the necessary experience and qualifications,” the lawsuit states, “but their requests were dismissed and rejected because Plaintiffs were not white.”
As per The New York Post, United Airlines resolved a prior case alleging the airline’s practice of staffing flights with “young, white, female, and predominantly blonde or blue-eyed” attendants. The recent lawsuit cites the 2020 settlement as the foundation for the new case, claiming that “things changed again in 2022 when several white United flight attendants were added to the ‘dedicated crew.’”