A DELTA AIR charge on your card: a ticket, a bag, a seat, or a second hold

Delta says a ticket number is a “13-digit document number beginning with 006”, and that a receipt for a checked bag used to start 00682.¹ On the state cards of Delaware, the line DELTA AIR followed by thirteen digits starting 006 is the most common Delta line: 3,591 of them, from 2014 to 2026. Next to it are DELTA AIR BAGGAGE FEE and DELTA AIR SEAT FEES.⁵ Delta’s page does not say the statement line carries the ticket number; the two have the same shape, and the check is to put them side by side.

What the state’s card data shows

The State of Delaware publishes every purchase its employees make on state cards. Its data has 5,295 lines whose name begins DELTA AIR, from 27 June 2014 to 25 September 2026.⁵ By form:

These are work cards, so the sizes are not those of a family holiday, and the data does not say who flew where. Three things in the ticket-number lines can be counted. The number is the key to the line: 3,381 lines carry 3,188 different numbers, and the same number comes back for two reasons. Of the 86 numbers with a credit, 75 also have a charge; for 70 of them the credit is exactly the amount of a charge, and it comes 0 to 327 days after the charge (the middle one 19 days). And 92 numbers carry two or more charges; for every one of the 92 the charges are on the same day, and the amounts are the same in only 15 of them.⁵ The data does not say why a number has a second charge, and we do not know.

The bag fee, against the dates it changed

Delta’s own page gives the fee for a first and a second checked bag, and says that “lower fees may apply depending on your date of purchase” and that a ticket bought earlier follows the older page.² The web archive has the page on four dates that show a change, and the amounts on the same lines in Delaware’s data can be set beside them.³

The two do not line up neatly, and we do not claim a cause. Delaware’s first 45.00 line, 27 February 2026, is five to six weeks before the archived copies show 45 as the first-bag fee (35 on 2 April 2026, 45 on 12 April 2026); but 45 was already the second-bag fee on the page from April 2024, and the data does not say which bag a line is. The 35.00 lines go on for more than three months after the page changed, which fits Delta’s note that the fee follows the date of purchase. Other amounts recur and are not explained by the page: 70.00 (22 lines from 21 June 2019 to 8 March 2024) and 60.00 (17 lines from 10 October 2015 to 15 November 2018).⁵

The name itself changed once. Until October 2015 a bag was charged on a line with a number: Delta’s page says baggage receipts begin 00682, and 188 of the 210 Delaware lines that start 00682 are exactly 25.00. The last of them is 22 October 2015; the first BAGGAGE FEE line is 4 October 2015.¹⁵ A bag fee since then has no number to look up.

When the money is owed back

The federal rule is Part 260 of Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, adopted by the Department of Transportation in April 2024. A bag fee must be refunded promptly when the bag is lost or “significantly delayed”, which for a trip inside the United States means not delivered within 12 hours of the last flight’s arrival, and only if the passenger filed a Mishandled Baggage Report with the airline.⁴ A fee for another extra, such as a seat, is to be refunded automatically when the service was not provided through no fault of the passenger; the rule’s examples are a cancellation, a significant change, an oversale and an aircraft swap.⁴ A refund goes back in the original form of payment, within 7 business days of the request for a credit card purchase and 20 calendar days for a debit card, and the airline may not keep a processing fee.⁴ The rule also says the airline that shows up on the card statement is the one that owes the refund: the “merchant of record” is defined as the entity “as shown in the consumer’s financial charge statements”.⁴ That is what the regulation says; whether a given refund was made, and when, is not in the data here.

What cardholders say they found

These are people’s own accounts on Reddit, not our findings, and we have not heard Delta’s side.⁶

• A second charge for the sum of the tickets. A post in r/delta says the poster bought two tickets, saw one posted charge for each, and a third, pending charge for the total under the name Delta Cargo Direct MC, which held their available credit for a week. Delta, by the poster’s account, said pending charges should drop off in 48 hours but offered nothing else. Commenters wrote that an airline authorizes the total and then charges each ticket separately; the poster wrote back that the card company said the two did not match and lifted the hold by hand. A later commenter describes the same thing for a purchase of 11 July 2021, two charges of 1,060 and one of 2,121, and says the card company’s supervisor removed the hold. These are the commenters’ explanations, and Delta’s page that we read does not speak to it.
• A debit card and a pending amount. In a thread whose original post is deleted, two commenters say they paid for a ticket with a debit card and ask whether the pending amount comes back; the one answer given is that a pending charge drops off after a few days. One of them writes of a credit card with a limit of 500 and a fare of 1,833.

How to find out which one it is, and get the money back

1. Read the line DELTA AIR and thirteen digits is a ticket or an exchange; BAGGAGE FEE is a bag; SEAT FEES a seat. If there is only a name and a cargo word, it is the pending case above.
2. Get the receipt On delta.com, “My Receipts” covers the past 24 months with an account. Within 24 hours of the last flight, My Trips takes a first name, last name and confirmation number and has an Email Receipt button under Payment Details. Otherwise email ticketreceipt@delta.com with the passenger name (sent by the ticketed passenger or the card holder), the ticket number and the type of card, and not the card number. If you do not know the ticket number, Delta asks for the date of travel and the origin airport instead. A booking made through a travel agency or a website is answered by that agency or site.¹
3. Check whether it is a hold Two lines for one purchase, one of them pending and for the sum of two or more tickets, is what the posters above describe. The card company can say what the pending amount belongs to and when it releases.⁶
4. For a bag or a seat that was not delivered Say so to Delta, and file the Mishandled Baggage Report before leaving the airport for a lost or delayed bag, because the rule makes the bag refund depend on it.⁴
5. If no ticket on your account matches Tell the card company that the line is not one you can match, and ask for a new card number. Delta’s page does not say what Delta does with such a report.

Is this a scam?

The name is real: public bodies in one state have paid it every year in the data from 2014 to 2026.⁵ That does not tell you a charge on your card is yours. The test is a receipt whose ticket number matches the digits on the line, not the name on it.

Why this page is on a site about held money

This site records payment companies that hold back money that belongs to someone else. An airline is not one of them and has no record here; this page is for the person who found a line they could not place. A room booked on Airbnb is a different line, a hotel booked through a booking site is on the page for CCI*HOTEL RES, a whole trip booked through Expedia is EXPEDIA and an itinerary number, and a ride is UBER *TRIP. Other lines are in the table of statement names.

Sources

1. Delta Air Lines, "Other Information", the part "Obtaining receipts for past travel": “Ticket Number (13-digit document number beginning with 006; please note baggage receipts begin with 00682)”; My Trips within 24 hours; My Receipts for the past 24 months; the email address and what to send; a travel agency or website answers for its own bookings. delta.com. Read on 22 October 2026.
2. Delta Air Lines, "Baggage & Travel Fees": the fees for Delta Comfort and Main on domestic flights are $45 and $55; “lower fees may apply depending on your date of purchase”; a ticket bought earlier follows the previous-fees page. delta.com. Read on 22 October 2026.
3. Internet Archive copies of the same Delta page, read on 22 October 2026: 3 March 2024 (30 and 40), 1 April 2024 (35 and 45), 2 April 2026 (35 and 45) and 12 April 2026 (45 and 55). The copy of 27 April 2026 was empty.
4. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, Title 14, Part 260: § 260.5 (a bag fee for a lost or significantly delayed bag, the Mishandled Baggage Report, the amount), § 260.4 (fees for services not provided, with cancellation, significant change, oversale and aircraft substitution as examples), § 260.10 (original form of payment, no processing fee) and § 260.2 (12 hours for domestic itineraries; “merchant of record”; 7 business days and 20 calendar days), all in Part 260. Read on 22 October 2026; the eCFR gives 20 October 2026 as its latest update for Title 14.
5. State of Delaware Open Data, State Employee Credit Card Transactions, fields "merchant", "trans_dt" and "merchandise_amt". Lines whose name begins DELTA AIR. Queried and counted on 22 October 2026: 5,295 lines. The ticket numbers are not printed here.
6. Reddit posts in r/delta, each the poster’s own account: “Delta charged me for my tickets as well as an additional pending charge for the sum of the tickets, which is impacting my available credit limit. Is this normal?” (reddit.com), whose comments run to 2021 and later; and a thread of which the original post is deleted (reddit.com). Read in a web browser on 22 October 2026; Reddit answers the web archive with a bot-check page, so no archived copies could be made.