US fines Delta $50,000 for booting off 3 Muslim passengers
Delta Air Lines is being fined $50,000 for ordering three Muslim passengers off planes even after the airline’s own security officials cleared them to travel.
Elaine Chow, Senator Mitch McConnell’s wife runs the DOT (in case you didn’t know)!
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.
Be sure to read the descriptions of the incidents. And see that CAIR is not completely happy, they wanted the fine to be bigger.
Were these incidents probes, test runs? They could be!
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which represented the Alis, questioned the size of the penalty.
Delta earned nearly $4.8 billion last year, and for a company that profitable, “$50,000 is basically a slap on the wrist,” said Karen Dabdoub, executive director of CAIR’s Cincinnati chapter.
It’s only a slap on the wrist says CAIR spox Dabdoub.
“But it’s a good sign that DOT is taking this seriously,” she added. “I’m glad to see that Delta received some sort of a sanction.”
The government did not explain how the size of the fine was determined but said that it “establishes a strong deterrent against future similar unlawful practices by Delta and other carriers.”
[….]
Delta said that in both cases, it acted based on the passengers’ behavior, not their identity, and its employees acted reasonably. In the case of the Alis, one of the complaining customers identified herself as a retired safety inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration, the airline said.
The Atlanta-based airline said that after the 2016 incidents it improved its procedures for investigating suspicious behavior to make it “more collaborative and objective.”
The moral of the story is that if you see something, you have to be very very nervous about saying something!
Are you steamed enough to speak up?
Then contact the White House and tell President Trump that he needs to look into this, if airlines are being hamstrung like this we aren’t safe!
Tell him this DOT-ordered sensitivity training is B*** S***!
