Chimamanda Adichie calls out Delta Airlines...DEAR DELTA AIRLINES, YOU MUST DO BETTER

Seven years ago, I sent this letter to Delta Airlines.
X
Delta Airlines Nigeria Policy: A Complaint
On April 20, 2010 I bought two Lagos-Baltimore return tickets on delta.com for my parents. I paid for the tickets with my credit card. They were scheduled to leave Lagos on June 3 2010 and return on November 1 2010. They arrived the United States as scheduled, with no incident. A few weeks later, our family plans changed. I contacted Delta and changed their return date to December 30 2010. A change fee was paid. Confirmation e-mails were sent. Everything else remained the same.
On December 30, I was ill in bed.
A family member took my parents to the airport. Delta representatives refused to check my parents in. They insisted that the credit card used to pay for the ticket must be physically produced, and the owner of the credit card physically appear, otherwise my parents would not be allowed to travel.
I called and asked to speak to a manager and was rudely told that nothing could be done.
I was shocked and unbelieving. My father, a 78-year-old diabetic who had an important family event to attend in Nigeria, was worried about missing his flight. I, unwell, was forced to dash to the airport as quickly as I could. I then ‘physically presented’ myself and my credit card.
My parents ended up missing their flight and were re-booked on the next flight.
While I understand that Delta is keen to prevent fraud, and I indeed sympathize about any fraudulent purchases that Nigerians might have made, Delta MUST also treat each case individually and not lump all Nigerian travelers into one group of potential fraudsters.
If the Delta representative had been willing to look at the specifics of this incident, it would have been quite clear that this was not in any way a fraudulent ticket purchase. My parents had already travelled on the first leg of the ticket months before and my credit card had already been fully charged.
I was fortunately at home, even if sick, but I might as well have been away. What then would have happened if I were unable to ‘physically appear?’ Does Delta expect everyone who buys tickets for family or friends always to be physically present at a Delta counter?
I write to register my profound disappointment and to strongly urge Delta to review its ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy towards Nigerian travelers. There must be ways to prevent fraud while also recognizing the individual humanity of each customer.
Sincerely,
Chimamanda Adichie
X


I sent this in 2010.
I received a generic, platitude-filled response, along with an inane one-hundred-dollar domestic Delta voucher that I never used.
It has been seven years and nothing has changed.
You still have to present yourself physically to show your card. No, you can’t have a family member bring the card. No, you can’t have a family member bring the card and a matching ID. (What are the odds that you would present a stolen credit card and a stolen valid ID?)
You complain and complain until you get tired because nobody cares. You tell yourself to just stop flying Delta but Delta has a monopoly on direct flights from the US to Nigeria, and the convenience, especially for elderly parents, matters.
You ask if this is something that Delta does only for Nigerian flights and you’re told that it’s done for all flight tickets bought online or over the phone.
But you know that is not true. You have purchased Delta tickets to Europe. You have never been asked to show your credit card. Not even when you purchased Delta tickets to Europe for a family member.
And as though it’s not bad enough that you have to physically present yourself at the airport, Delta gives you no confirmation that the card has been ‘presented.’ A Delta representative merely taps at a computer and says it’s done.
Which means that your cousin who flew from Lagos to the US, on a ticket you paid for, had difficulty boarding her flight, even though you had shown your card at the Delta counter at BWI, but you had no ‘proof’ of this.
Once in 2015 you were travelling from BWI to Lagos on a ticket purchased by a travel agent and Delta representatives asked for the credit card used to purchase the ticket, and you explained that it had been purchased by your Publisher’s travel agency and that you had already travelled on the first leg from Lagos to BWI.
But you were not allowed to board.
A Delta representative said, “your only option is to buy a new ticket here and the other one can be refunded later,” speaking airily as though buying a flight ticket was like buying candy.
You were frustrated and furious but you had to be in Lagos the next day. You were left no choice but to buy a new ticket at the airport. The Delta representatives remained indifferent as you tried to tell them how this made no sense, how you had already travelled on the first leg of the same ticket, how a ticket purchased by an established travel agency could not possibly be fraudulent.
‘Indifferent’ is inaccurate. The Delta representatives at BWI are decidedly unpleasant.
(except for one person, and it is telling that this one person stands out, so rare is her courtesy)
The others all glow with hostility.
You wonder if this hostility is simply the rage of workers who are not paid a fair wage, or if it is the armor they wear to implement policies that they know very well are ridiculous.
On another occasion in 2015 when you are forced to present yourself so that your parents could board a flight, you complain and ask for the manager. The manager looks through you as you try to speak. She manages to be both stone-faced and reproachful. You feel accused. You feel like a thief.
Nobody deserves this but even in an aviation industry that rewards frequent fliers with privileges, yours don’t count – your platinum frequent flier card means nothing because you are a Nigerian and Nigerians are all a blur of fraudulence. God save you if the only time you can go to the airport to ‘physically present yourself and your card’ happens to be a busy check-in time. You will stand in the special services line forever, ignored, waiting to convince Delta to take your money. If you do show the card but then need to change your travel to a different date, you must again physically show yourself and your card.
Delta’s policy is crude and contemptuous. Crude because Delta won’t bother to figure out a more sophisticated way to address fraudulent ticket purchases. Contemptuous because Delta is indifferent to the unfair burden that this places on Nigerians. Some hardworking Nigerians have two jobs, families, responsibilities. They buy tickets for themselves and their families, they pay with their hard-earned money, and Delta asks them to ‘present yourself’ at a Delta Airlines counter which may be twenty or fifty or one hundred miles from where they live.
Delta’s message is this: If you want your family to board their flight then present yourself, and prove to us that you are not a thief because we start with the premise that you are a thief.
And it might be a good idea, Delta, to better train your flight attendants on your Nigeria flights (or perhaps pay them a fair wage?) Like the patronizing woman in the business class cabin of the Lagos-Atlanta flight on October 31 2017 telling me that my two-year-old daughter – who had a full seat and presumably the normal rights of any passenger – was ‘annoying.’ She was ‘annoying’ because she was babbling like a two-year-old and had pressed the ‘call attendant’ button two times. I was stunned. Because I know how easily Nigerian passengers are labeled ‘aggressive’ and ‘difficult,’ I chose not to speak to this woman. I feared I might raise my voice.
Instead I wrote her a note on the menu card, telling her how unacceptable her manner and language had been and how people deserved to be treated with dignity. She read it and came to my seat and pushed the card back at me and said, “I will not accept this from you!”
Dear Delta Airlines, enough. You must do better.

The inhuman treatment Nigerians get from these foreign airlines is unbelievable and we seem to be hapless victims of a system specially designed to degrade us....