A Black woman has accused Delta Airlines of booting her to the back of a plane mid-flight for the convenience of two white women.
In a story first reported by ABC7 Bay Area, Camille Henderson described an experience that sounds like it was straight from the Jim Crow era, when Black people were routinely moved to the back of the bus. Henderson said she boarded a Feb. 3 flight by herself from Atlanta to San Francisco. After taking her seat in 15A—a window seat—she said the last two passengers to board the plane had a disagreement with flight attendants over the seating arrangement. The two women, who were white, said they were supposed to have first-class seats due to a phone call they had with a Delta representative, but they did not speak with anyone at the gate before getting on the plane. Physically, they didn’t have first-class tickets. Instead, they had tickets for 15B and C—middle and aisle seats.
“The whole first hour of the flight, as we’re taking off and after being served, they kind of were going back and forth with each other about how much space they don’t have, how inconvenienced they were because they were supposed to have first-class seats,” Henderson said in an interview with The Daily Beast.
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Henderson recalled the women, who she said were about in their 50s, called over a flight attendant and tried to explain their seating situation. The flight attendant said that there was nothing he could do if they physically did not have first-class tickets.
The women allegedly called another flight attendant over when the first was unable to help them. The women told him they saw two seats open in first-class and asked if they could move there instead. In audio Henderson recorded, the flight attendant can be heard saying that nothing could be done if the women did not have appropriate tickets.
“Can I call Delta later and make sure they have all of the notes in their system?” one of the women asked.
“Absolutely,” the flight attendant told her.
After about 10 minutes, while Henderson was trying to sleep, she said a flight attendant came back and asked if she was traveling alone.
She recalled the flight attendant saying that if she moved, it would give the two women more room.
Henderson, 25, said she didn’t want to make a scene and agreed to transition from her window seat to an aisle seat in the very back of the plane.
“I don’t want to be the angry Black woman that doesn’t listen to the rules, even though the rules were that I paid for a seat and I went to my seat and I didn’t ask to move,” she said.
“When I moved to the back,” Henderson continued, “the whole plane is looking at me. It’s not like we were boarding. It’s not like they moved me before the plane took off. …I have to carry all of my stuff with me to the back. As I’m moving to the back of the plane, everybody is kind of looking. It’s just kind of embarrassing. I just felt like I was put under the spotlight, and I really should not have. There was no need for me to move. There were all of these open seats in the back, even if it meant separating them. I don’t know why they didn’t move them.”
Henderson said she was offered a complimentary cocktail, but she doesn’t drink.
After landing in San Francisco, Henderson claimed that she made multiple attempts to get in touch with a Delta customer service representative. However, after multiple attempts and multiple hours on hold, her frustration with the situation intensified, she said.
“I’ve never been so humiliated on a Delta flight before,” Henderson told the supervisor on a recorded call. “I just don’t understand why this became my issue and why the resolution was to force me to move to the back of the plane.”
“How were you humiliated?” the supervisor asked, adding that “it was still the main cabin.”
Henderson explained that people snickered at her and made her uncomfortable when she had to relocate and move her things to the back.
“You had a main cabin ticket. When they moved you, you still had a main cabin seat,” the supervisor cut her off. “At this area of reservation, I wouldn’t be able to compensate you.”
“I didn’t ask for compensation. I didn’t ask for that once,” Henderson told The Daily Beast. “I asked for just an acknowledgement as to what happened to me. I didn’t ask to have my money back, but you’re assuming that I’m calling to get my money back.”
After that, the representative said there was nothing else he could do, and Henderson decided to take her story to the media.
“They had a bigger voice than I did,” she said. “Delta, obviously, wasn’t listening to me. There was no way to get it resolved.”
The Daily Beast reached out to Delta Airlines Corporate Communications, but an appropriate representative did not respond to a request for comment.
“I want Delta to apologize,” Henderson told The Daily Beast. “I want them to do whatever they’re going to have to do—if it’s better training for sensitivity or what.”
On Delta’s website, the company lists a number of initiatives to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within the workplace. However, nothing seems to indicate equity and training efforts for the sake of customers.
Since the incident made its way to local news in the Bay Area, Henderson said she’s been bombarded by online bullies calling her a liar and blaming her for what happened.
“We cannot have conversations about white people’s conveniences at the expense of Black people being inconvenienced. [People focus on] the big events: the George Floyds, all of the people that are unjustly killed by police, redlinings, food deserts, all these things that happen on a larger scale,” Henderson said. “But we’re not necessarily talking about the microaggressions—actions that happen every single day to Black people.”
“I’m not looking for anything from Delta. I’m not looking to be compensated. It’s just a simple acknowledgement of a situation that they put me through that made me feel dehumanized.”
