British airline easyJet apologised and paid an undisclosed amount
in compensation to a woman passenger who was asked to move seats twice because
she is a woman. Melanie Wolfson, the aggrieved passenger, was asked to change
seats as two ultra-Orthodox men refused to sit next to a woman, reported Independent.

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Wolfson, who had to go through the similar treatment twice, both the times while travelling from her home in Tel Aviv to London, pursued a suit seeking a compensation of 66,438 shekels (£14,400). The case was filed by a reformist group, the Israel Religious Action Centre.

The first occasion dates back to November 2019, when Wolfson, who paid for an aisle seat was asked to swap seats by two men who were already sitting in the window and middle seats. As per an Independent report, one of the men got off his seat to avoid any physical contact with Wolfson, who at last swamped seat to avoid any further delay in flight.

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In the second similar instance of January 2020, Wolfson was again asked to change seats by two ultra-Orthodox men but this time she refused to swap places and eventually the men managed to persuade two of the other female passengers to swap seats with them.

easyJet, in a statement, said that the airlines is aware of the issue where some male passengers say they are uncomfortable sitting next to women who are not in their immediate family, due to their religious beliefs and as a result request that a crew member ask female passengers to move seats.  

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The statement further said that easyJet took cognizance of Wolfson’s complain of gender discrimination on their flights.

“We take this very seriously and in addition to compensating Ms Wolfson for her experience, easyJet intends to implement additional crew training and renew our crew guidelines in order to prevent these incidents from happening in the future.” the statement read.

However, this is not the first time when such incident is reported. In 2016, an 81-year-old sued Israel’s national airline after a crew member asked her to move seats because an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man said he would not sit with her.