A woman in North Carolina said she received an 'African American, African service charge' from American Airlines

• A woman said she saw an offensive charge on her bank statement after traveling with American Airlines.
• Kyetra Bryant said the charge on her statement read "African American, African service charge."
• An airline representative told Insider they were "disturbed" and "immediately launched an investigation."

A woman in North Carolina said she saw an offensive charge on her bank statement after she and her boyfriend traveled with American Airlines over Thanksgiving, Charlotte's WJZY-TV reported.

Kyetra Bryant told the news station that she saw an "African American, African service charge" on her statement that weekend. She said she and her boyfriend had purchased their own tickets and covered their own baggage fees.

"Over Thanksgiving, my boyfriend and I traveled from Charlotte to Denver with American, but I had no idea the trip would be ruined due to racial profiling and bias," Bryant said in a Facebook post on Saturday.

When Bryant reached out to the airline, a representative told her, "I don't know what you're talking about," Bryant told WJZY-TV.

She said she replied: "I have a screenshot here on two different phones and a computer, and it says it's from American Charlotte, so I want to know why is it listed this way?"

Bryant told WJZY-TV that months later she had still received no clear explanation from her bank or the airline; she said each has blamed the other for the mishap.

"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,'" she said. "And to this day it hasn't changed on either one of our statements."

An American Airlines representative told Insider that they were "disturbed" and that the incident was under investigation.

"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. The baggage fee was purchased at a self-service kiosk in Charlotte," the representative said.

"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."

In her Facebook post, Bryant said that she had not "received an apology or a response in almost a month other than it was being 'investigated'" and that her bank "clearly stated that they have no control over the verbiage presented by the merchant."

Bryant told WJZY-TV that there was "no justification" for what happened.

"We definitely felt targeted," she said.

Mastercard did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read the full report at WJZY-TV »