On Friday, January 24, the United States Department of Transport (DoT) ordered Delta Air Lines to pay a $ 50,000 fine due to allegations that the American company twice violated federal law in 2016 by discriminating against Muslim passengers.

In 2016, Delta Air Lines had ordered three Muslim passengers on two different flights to leave the plane, even though the airline’s own security officials had authorized them to travel. Delta has denied discriminating against passengers in two separate incidents but agreed that it could have handled the situations differently, according to an order made public by the United States Department of Transportation on Friday. The department alleged that Delta violated anti-bias laws by removing passengers from their flights and ordered the airline to provide cultural training to the pilots, flight attendants and customer service agents involved in the incidents.









In one case, in July 2016 in Paris, a passenger told a flight attendant that a couple made her nervous. The woman wore a headscarf and, according to the other passenger, the man inserted something into her phone. The cabin crew member said that she saw the man write « Allah » several times while he was texting from his phone. At the captain’s request, a Delta supervisor and a safety officer interrogated the couple outside the aircraft. The Delta security officials said the couple was US citizens returning home to Cincinnati and « did not raise any red flags, » and they were allowed to fly, the report said. However, the captain refused to let them board the plane. They returned home the next day.

The second case occurred five days later in Amsterdam. The flight attendants and passengers complained about a Muslim passenger, but the co-pilot saw nothing unusual about the man, and the Delta security office said his file raised no concerns. The captain prepared to begin the flight to New York, then returned to the boarding gate and removed the man and his bags and searched the area around his seat. The man was not further screened before boarding a subsequent flight, which, according to the Ministry of Transport, showed that his withdrawal from the first flight was discriminatory.









Delta disagrees with the government’s assertion of discrimination, but « Delta does not dispute that each of these two incidents could have been treated differently, » the government said in the consent order. According to Delta, in both cases, it acted on the behavior of the passengers, not their identity, and its employees acted in a reasonable manner. The Atlanta-based airline said that after the 2016 incidents, it had improved its procedures for investigating suspicious behavior to make it « more collaborative and objective. »