Making Her Connection

On a recent travel seminar to Rwanda, one of the students arrived in the capital city of Kigali no problem. Her luggage, however, did not.

At breakfast on the second morning, her suitcase still AWOL, the student gazed at her baggage receipt wistfully and wondered when she might get an update.

Seeing the slip, one of her fellow Suffolk student travelers perked right up. “Girl! Why didn’t you tell me it was a Delta Airlines receipt? I work there when I’m not in class! Let me check my app and see if I can find where your bag is.”

An undergraduate law major, Amanda Silva, BA ’24, has worked for Delta Airlines since April 2022. She started night shifts at the ticket counter at Logan Airport, checking people in and tagging their bags. She then helped “get planes in” as they arrived: deplaning passengers and directing them to connecting flights and baggage claim. Then it was baggage services (knowledge that came in handy on the Rwanda trip). She’s since worked her way up high enough that she’s the one they call if things go wrong at the gates: angry passengers, cancelled flights, weather issues. Born in Brazil, Silva is fluent in Portuguese. “They always contact me if there’s someone from Rio who’s lost or confused,” she says.

Along the way, she’s been able to travel to places like Rome, Lisbon, Tulum, and Cancun. She’s had to deal with an often impatient, occasionally rude, post-pandemic traveling public. And she’s been able to take what she’s learned about helping people at the airport—where she works 32 hours a week—into her internship at the Massachusetts Trial Court—where she works an additional 32 hours a week. At the court, she helps attorneys with litigants, assists in completing court forms, and researches community resources to support court users’ issues.

“Delta has definitely helped me with my internship at the court,” Silva says. “I’ve grown used to seeing big feelings every single day. Now when someone comes up to me and says they have three kids and there’s a domestic violence case on the father, I’m able to say, ‘OK, let’s sit down. We can do this.’”

Silva came to Delta after working retail jobs at places like Home Depot and Starbucks. So she understands what customer service entails, even if serving the correct mochaccino is lower stakes than helping someone deal with a nasty divorce or a cancelled flight.

“I feel like a lot of people can’t do this type of job if they’re not a little sympathetic about someone’s situation,” she says. “One reason is because people come into the airport or courthouse already upset and stressed. And, really, there are big things at stake for most of them.”

One of 52 undergraduate law students who graduated from the College of Arts & Sciences in May, Silva hopes to continue working in the Trial Court and go on to law school. And she’s definitely going to keep working at Delta so she can take advantage of the free travel. “I’m going to non-rev my way around the world!” she laughs.

Epilogue: The Suffolk student who lost her luggage did, indeed, get her bags back on day three. And Silva was instrumental in helping the student group find new flights home when their plane was cancelled at the last minute.