Southwest Airlines Veers Into Fashion Controversy—Again
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 09.07.07 | 3:54 PM ET
The airline that once booted a passenger off a flight for wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words Meet the Fockers—it had pictures of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice— is making travel fashion headlines once again. Southwest Airlines apparently didn’t care for the skirt and top that 23-year-old college student and Hooters waitress Kyla Ebbert wore aboard a flight two months ago from San Diego to Tucson. Reported the San Diego Union-Tribune this week, Ebbert “had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon in Tucson, where temperatures had topped 106 all week. She arrived at Lindbergh Field [in San Diego] wearing a white denim miniskirt, high-heel sandals, and a turquoise summer sweater over a tank top over a bra.” The U-T has a photo of said outfit.
After she boarded, a customer service representative ordered her off the plane and asked her to change clothes. She didn’t have luggage, complained and was allowed to return to the plane after adjusting the outfit.
Then she “took her seat and spread a blanket over her lap,” and “kept her composure until the plane landed, when she called her mother and broke down,” the paper reported.
In a letter to Ebbert’s mother, the airline said it could remove any passenger “whose clothing is lewd, obscene or patently offensive.”
Related on World Hum:
* Southwest Airlines Boots Passenger for ‘Fockers’ Shirt
* Update: Lorrie Heasley, ‘The Fockers’ and the United States Constitution
* Ecuadorian Airlines Unveils In-Flight Lingerie Show
Photo by Ack Ook via Flickr, (Creative Commons).