PARIS, July 3 (Xinhua) -- After being attacked by French anti-discrimination association SOS Racisme, Air France has justified the use of cards specifying the ethnicity of stewards and hostesses for "special flights" as a tool for promoting "diversity."

    On May 15, the Paris-based SOS Racisme lodged a complaint with the public prosecutor alleging that the company had established "ethnic-based personnel files" and perpetrating "racial discrimination in the allocation of flights."

    This, according to the accusations filed by the reputed anti-racism association, was particularly pronounced when it came to the allocation of flight duties to communications crew, mainly stewards and hostesses.

    Addressing reporters, Samuel Thomas, a SOS Racisme spokesman, accused Air France of conducting "profiling" on the basis of a well-established ethnic criteria in order to "meet the demands of some commercial passengers."

    But Air France has denied the accusations stating that the records referred to by the association have been in place since "late 2003," according to a statement issued by the company.

    "This is a tool for enhancing equity and diversity to accommodate the crews of these often prestigious flights," said the company, referring to official flights, VIP events, aircrafts chartered by sports federations, businessmen, humanitarian flight etc.

    "We have a very diverse staff. We want to show this on special flights where it was always the same people who worked there before," said a spokesman, who said that 1,000 employees out of about 16,000 had been profiled ethnically

    For each volunteer, a form is completed by way of a pre-prepared questionnaire. One is required to state the size, hair color and also asked to describe their ethnicity on the basis of a seven-point criteria: African, Caribbean, Asian, Eurasian, Indian, Mediterranean or Western, according to Air France.

    According to Cyril Jouan, national secretary of an Air France labor union, his organization had questioned the company several times over the practice. The company said that it does this to best meet customer demands, "thus, an Indian private charter requested and obtained an Indian crew to serve on a Paris-Cayenne flight," said the CFDT labor official.

    "We have been wondering over these economic incentives and their limitations," said Jouan, who called for "clear and convincing answers" from the company and "the withdrawal of the ethnic-based profiling criteria."

    These criteria are "illegitimate" and "illegal," according to SOS Racisme, which has described the company's ethnic profiling as outrageous. In its submissions to French prosecutors, the Paris-based association recalled that the Constitutional Council had on Nov. 15, 2007 invalidated the provisions of an immigration law that required ethnic statistics.

    "What the Constitutional Council did was to only attract attention to the existence of the laws," according to Air France, which said that its process was above board and completely legal.

    "The practice has been declared to the relevant authorities since February 2004" and the provision of information considered ethnic nature is "not mandatory," said the company, referring to CNIL, adding that files are maintained "with the agreement of the employee."

    The National Commission on Informatics and Liberties (CNIL) has itself come under fire for having "authorized the creation of a tool of discrimination in hiring" with regard to the unraveling Air France saga.

    For several years, associations and human resources managers across France have been campaigning for the adoption of measurement tools based on ethnic origins of employees in a bid to fight against discrimination in the workplace.

    "At the time, the informatics and liberties law was not requiring prior authorization for the implementation of this type of mechanism," CNIL's president Alex Turk wrote in a letter to SOS Racisme, nevertheless saying that he will "intervene" in the Air France case.