Airline Tacks on ‘African American’ Service Fee To Passenger

A Charlotte, N.C. woman was shocked when she saw a racially insensitive remark next to a bank charge on her statement after flying on American Airlines back during Thanksgiving, a story only coming to light now after a local television station helped her get an explanation.

Kyetra Bryant and her boyfriend flew the airline out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport on Thanksgiving Day, only to find days later a charge on her bank statement that read: “African American, African service charge” as part of a baggage fee.

“I said hmmm, ‘African American, African service charge.’ It was just on my cell phone because I was looking at my banking app. I’m like ‘what is this?’” Bryant said.
Angered, Bryant reached out to American – several times over two months.

The one time she got through to a service representative, Bryan said a female American Airlines employee said ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

“I’m like I have a screenshot here on two different phones and a computer, and it says it’s from American Charlotte, and I want to know why it’s listed this way?” Bryant said, only to get the runaround from both the airline and her bank.

“The bank told American directly, we don’t have anything to do with that. When you put something into your system, we charge it as the merchant charges it, and that’s it,” Bryant said. “To this day it hasn’t changed on each of our statements.”

That’s when local television station Fox 46 became involved as part of its consumer help segments. Almost immediately, Fox 46 was able to get a statement from American Airlines, which took no culpability.

“The customer alerted American to the offensively labeled baggage fee on her bank statement in mid-December. We were disturbed by what we saw and immediately launched an investigation to understand what occurred,” according to the statement from American. “The baggage fee was purchased at a self-service kiosk in Charlotte. Our team members are unable to change text when processing a charge and we’ve determined the issue originated with the credit card company and bank issuer. We reached out to Mastercard who confirmed that American submitted the baggage fee information correctly during the payment process and Mastercard is conducting its own investigation.”

Bryant said she still wants an apology from one or both of the entities involved.

“There’s really no justification,” she said. “We definitely felt targeted. That’s an instance of racial bias.”