Delta claims it made it up to Marine vet with prosthetic legs after crew booted him from exit row seat

Delta Airlines acknowledged Wednesday it wronged the Marine veteran with prosthetics legs who said he was forced by a flight crew to move from an emergency exit row seat, setting off a lawsuit this week.

The airline issued a mea culpa two days after Matias Ferreira, now a Suffolk County cop, accused the company in legal papers of discriminating against him before takeoff on a May flight from JFK Airport to Atlanta because he’s a double-amputee.

Delta said in a statement – also two days after The Post sought comment — that it “apologized directly” to the flier and took other actions to fix the situation. It declined to weigh in on the legal action.

“Delta has a decades-long record of championing accessible travel for all and listening to the community via our Advisory Board on Disability and Accessible Travel,” an airline spokesperson emailed.

“That’s why we immediately looked into this situation, apologized directly to the customer, issued a refund and compensation and took appropriate corrective actions internally. We will respond to the litigation in due course.”

Ferreira, who lost his legs when he stepped on an IED while serving the country in Afghanistan in 2011, said in an interview Monday he typically books an exit row seat for the extra leg room and never had an issue sitting there until he boarded the Delta flight in May.

Crew on the plane are supposed to ask fliers sitting in an emergency row if they can jump into action in the event of an issue with flight, but Ferreira, who had shorts on, claimed a flight attendant asked him to move seats.

A captain also backed that request up, and Ferreira, 36, moved without incident, according to the lawsuit. Still, the married father of two said he was left stunned and embarrassed.

His lawyer, Norman Steiner, provided a letter to The Post this week that showed Delta wrote to Ferreira about two weeks after the flight, and apologized to him then.

“For clarification, passengers using prosthetics are not prohibited from sitting in an exit row,” the letter states.

“So long as the passenger verbally communicates their willingness and ability to assist in an evacuation should one become necessary, the passenger should be allowed to remain in the exit row.”

The legal action filed in Queens state Supreme Court is seeking unspecified damages, but Steiner and Ferreira said they want to ensure Ferreira’s experience isn’t repeated. 

“I felt like I was viewed as a liability, not as a United States Marine, not as a police officer, not as a father of two, not as a person who golfs and skydives and shoots and does all sorts of stuff,” Ferreira said Monday.