Mother says she couldn’t book ticket for child because of Delta Airlines’ lack of non-binary gender option

A 52-year-old woman slammed Delta Airlines on Twitter for failing to offer a gender option other than “male” or “female” when booking tickets, calling the airline’s policy discriminatory.

Dawn Henry, a resident of Arizona, described her complaint in a Twitter thread last Thursday, saying she was trying to buy a surprise plane ticket for her 21-year-old non-binary child when she discovered Delta has no such option .

Ms Henry said her child is non-binary, meaning they identify as neither male nor female. While the US government allows people who identify as non-binary to have an “X” gender marker on birth certificates and is also moving towards adding the option for passports, Ms Henry says that even after following up with the airline she was denied the option, which resulted in her child not being able to fly.

“Delta is discriminating against #nonbinary individuals and not allowing them to fly despite legal ID issued by states that allow X on birth certificates and state-issued IDs,” Ms Henry wrote on 7 January in a long thread on Twitter.

She referred to the guidelines of the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which oversees travel security, that the name, gender and birth date of the passenger on the boarding pass reservation should match the state-issued ID. While her child’s state ID has X marked as the gender, the airline’s online reservation portal did not have this option.

Ms Henry said when she called the airline they couldn’t help her, while one supervisor told her that was “airline policy”.

“But as it stands, at least with @Delta, #nonbinary people are not allowed to fly,” Ms Henry tweeted. “The supervisor said that’s not true. But when a policy makes it impossible to buy a ticket that will comport with TSA guidelines, the result is the same. And that’s discrimination.”

The incident comes over two years after major US airline companies, including Delta, claimed they were changing their interface to allow people to select non-binary as option to the gender menu on their sites.

However, in a statement to NBC News, a Delta spokesperson said the airline was still working on adding this option for customers.

“Delta Air Lines is a proud, long-time supporter of the LGBTQ+ community and we understand that being seen and acknowledged is part of having an equitable travel experience,” the spokesperson said.

“While we quickly shifted focus due to Covid in early 2020 to helping customers navigate the rapidly changing environment and government regulations, we are back on track to be able to offer a non-binary gender option in our booking systems in 2022.”