The flag carrier has agreed to pay businessman Mirko Fischer £750 in damages plus £2,161 in legal costs after he alleged BA cabin crew made him feel like a “child molester”.
Mr Fischer’s complaint centred on BA’s policy of forbidding male passengers from sitting next to unaccompanied minors, which he claimed breaks the Sex Discrimination Act.
The businessman had been on a
Within minutes of switching seats BA cabin crew told him that he must swap back because he was sitting next to a child who was travelling without a parent or guardian. Mr Fischer accepted their request, but insisted the incident had left him feeling “embarrassed, humiliated and angry”.
“There were no raised voices but we were in a public place and there were obviously people around us wondering what was happening,” the 35-year-old hedge fund manager said. “They accuse you of being some kind of child molester just because you are sitting next to someone.
He continued: “It is no different from stopping men from being allowed to sit next to boys in a public place, but where will this stop? Children need to interact with both men and women.”
Mr Fischer said he took BA to court as “a matter of principle” and has donated more than the sum of his court costs and damages to children’s charities Kidscape and Orphans in the Wild.
A spokesman for BA said that the decision to pay out was not an acknowledgment that its policy is discriminatory, but he said a review was underway. Airlines are free to set their own rules over child seating arrangements, and neither Virgin Atlantic nor easyJet impose any such restrictions.
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