FLYING WHILE BLACK @ AMERICAN AIRLINES

n September 2022, newlyweds Anthony Williams and Katsiaryna Shasholka were aboard American Airlines flight 2408, from their hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, to Miami, when a fellow passenger became suspicious and reported the mixed-race couple to the cabin crew, the complaint states.

Williams and Shasholka were then questioned by officers with the Miami-Dade Police Department, leaving the two “humiliated,” the complaint contends, which says the entire interaction was captured on camera.

In September 2023, professional guitarist David Ryan Harris, who has played with John Mayer, Dave Matthews, and Mariah Carey, was accused of trafficking his own children on a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, according to the complaint. Upon deplaning, Harris and his sons, Truman and Hendrix, were intercepted at the top of the jetway by an American Airlines employee and four police officers who had been notified by a flight attendant that called ahead “with some sort of concern that his biracial children were not his children, because they were unresponsive during an interaction with her,” the complaint states.