What do you usually wear on an airplane? If your typical plane attire includes a mini skirt and tight fitting shirt you may want to bring along an extra outfit just in case. At least if you are flying Southwest Airlines.
The air carrier is currently embroiled in a nasty PR war with a 23-year-old woman who boarded a Southwest Airlines flight bound for Arizona in attire one flight attendant considered “too revealing.”
Two months ago Kyla Ebbert was escorted off her flight from San Diego when an airline employee became disgusted with her outfit. Ebbert says she was wearing a snug-fitting white top with a scoop neck that didn’t reveal any cleavage, a cropped short-sleeved green sweater that buttoned under her bosom, and a white miniskirt that hit upper-thigh.
So, basically, she was wearing an outfit any other college student living in San Diego would put on. (Incidentally, it was a lot more than what Ebbert typically wears for her job as a Hooters waitress.) Regardless, the outfit didn’t go over well with an airline employee who asked Ebbert to leave the plane before it departed. Originally, the college student said a male Southwest employee told her she would have to catch a later flight because her skimpy attire didn’t cut it.
“You’re dressed inappropriately. This is a family airline. You’re too provocative to fly on this plane,” Ebbert quoted the employee as saying.
“I said, ‘What part is it? The shirt? The skirt? Which part?’ And he said the whole thing.”
“He said ‘You can go to the gift shop and you can buy something to wear there. Until then, you’re not flying on this flight,’ ” Ebbert said.
Ebbert says she was finally allowed back on the plane after she agreed to adjust her sweater, pull up her top, which she says wasn’t showing cleavage to begin with, and pull down her skirt. But, she says she was humiliated by the entire incident and cried during the entire flight from San Diego to Arizona.
Ebbert recalled the story on NBC’s “Today” show last week. She told Matt Lauer she was completely embarrassed by the ordeal.
“I felt like everybody was staring at me. They had all heard him lecturing me,” Ebbert told Lauer as she modeled the same short white skirt, white shirt and green sweater that she said she wore on the flight.
As for the airline, a company spokesperson told a local newspaper it doesn’t have a dress code and it doesn’t have a problem with a passenger’s outfit as long as it “covers up all the right spots. Ebbert says she went public with her story because she wants an apology from the airline, which she has yet to receive.
Do you think the airline owes Ebbert an apology? And what do you think about airlines enforcing dress codes?
By the way, according to Ebbert, she had no problem when she wore the same outfit on the return flight to San Diego later that day. In fact, Ebbert says a female flight attendant complimented her on the way she looked.
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