Suspended mid-shift after decades on the job - and the airline's story shifted, the lawsuit claims
A long-serving Delta Air Lines worker says the airline pushed him out after nearly three decades on the job - and handed his role to someone far younger.
Brian Cullen, 54, sued Delta Air Lines on May 18, 2026, in the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, alleging age discrimination under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. He worked as an aircraft load agent at Nashville International Airport from July 1996 until Delta suspended him without pay on January 15, 2025, and fired him on March 24, 2025. According to the complaint, he had no prior discipline and no performance improvement plans in his file.
The case is shaping up around a familiar HR pressure point: whether an internal investigation was fair, and whether the rules applied to one worker were applied to everyone else.
Cullen alleges Delta pulled him off an active shift on January 15, 2025, and into a conference room with a regional manager, two corporate security staff and an investigator. The complaint says he was told he "made a lot of money last year" and asked to account for his movements on a single day five months earlier. According to the filing, Delta then accused him of going to the employee parking lot late at night and bypassing security on other dates in the summer and fall of 2024.
Cullen says he had reasons for each instance - 20-hour double shifts, a heavy load of charter...
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