US fines Delta $50,000 for booting off 3 Muslim passengers
Source: Associated Press
US fines Delta $50,000 for booting off 3 Muslim passengers
By DAVID KOENIG
January 24, 2020
Delta Air Lines is being fined $50,000 for ordering three Muslim passengers off planes even after the airlines own security officials cleared them to travel.
Delta denied that it discriminated against the passengers in two separate incidents but agreed it could have handled the situations differently, according to a consent order released Friday by the U.S. Transportation Department.
The department alleged that Delta violated anti-bias laws by removing the passengers, and ordered the airline to provide cultural-sensitivity training to pilots, flight attendants and customer-service agents involved in the incidents.
In one of the cases, in July 2016 in Paris, a passenger told a flight attendant that a couple made her nervous. The woman was wearing a head scarf, and the other passenger claimed the man inserted something in his phone. The flight attendant said she walked by and saw the man writing Allah several times while texting on his phone.
At the captains request, a Delta supervisor and security officer interviewed the couple outside the plane. Deltas corporate security office reported that the couple were U.S. citizens returning home to Cincinnati and raised no red flags, and they were cleared to fly, according to the consent order. But the captain refused to let them re-board the plane; they flew home the next day.
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