Airline bans woman from flight over ‘lewd, obscene’ top

An airline has offered a woman a refund after she was forced to put on the pilot’s T-shirt because her outfit was deemed in appropriate.

American carrier Southwest Airlines has apologised to a passenger who was refused boarding on a flight due to her “lewd, obscene and offensive” outfit — and was able to fly only after borrowing a T-shirt from the captain.

Kayla Eubanks took to Twitter last week to call out the airline following the drama as she tried to board her flight from New York to Chicago.

She said she was initially stopped from boarding at the gate after an airline staff member pulled her up on what she was wearing.

“Y’all I was kicked off my @SouthwestAir flight because my boobs are ‘lewd, obscene and offensive’. I was told that passengers may look at me in my attire and be offended,” Ms Eubanks tweeted, along with a photo of her in a black top, long red skirt and sneakers.

“How will my shirt impact my flight, for myself, the other passengers or even the pilot? Y’all have a dress code for CUSTOMERS who pay to get on a plane? It’s the constant policing of women’s bodies for me.”

Kayla Eubanks said she was stopped from boarding a Southwest Airlines flight due to the outfit she was wearing. Picture: Kayla Eubanks

A video Ms Eubanks posted on Twitter shows her asking the employee to show her the airline’s dress code policy.

She said she waited for 20 minutes to see it.

“If it’s there, why can’t y’all find it?” she asked the employee. “If it’s there, why don’t y’all know it?”

Towards the end of the video, the worker appears to tell another employee to “close the plane in three minutes” before asking Ms Eubanks if she would cover up after she was unable to find the policy.

“I kid y’all not, from the moment I stepped into my departing airport, to the duration of the flight and even after I landed, I was harassed,” Ms Eubanks tweeted.

“Not by passengers, but by Southwest employees. Half of the employees were complimenting me & the other half was asking where my shirt was.”

Later, the captain was brought in and offered his shirt to Ms Eubanks so she could board the plane.

Ms Eubanks said she held at the gate for about half an hour. Picture: Kayla Eubanks

“I eventually took it off,” Ms Eubanks wrote on Twitter. “Only to be told that I would have to speak with a supervisor upon landing.”

Southwest Airlines said it had since apologised to Ms Eubanks and offered her a refund as a “gesture of goodwill”.

The airline’s dress code says: “Dress to impress. While Southwest’s dress code is relaxed and casual, you will be expected to present a clean, well groomed, and tasteful appearance.”

Ms Eubanks told Buzzfeed News she chose to wear the outfit she wore so she would be dressed for the hot weather in Chicago when she landed.

She said a problem was the inconsistency in how airline staff enforced expectations of passengers’ attire.

Ms Eubanks was only able to board when she agreed to borrow the captain's T-shirt. Picture: Kayla Eubanks

“I’ve seen men on planes shirtless. I’ve seen them with tank tops where I can see their nipples on the side – not to make it about other people, but I’ve seen a lot of other things on planes,” she told Buzzfeed News.

“It seemed like everything that was going on was based on personal biases, and I just don’t feel like that’s appropriate.

“If there is a policy, then let that be the policy for everyone, every day. Don’t let it be, ‘Oh, this person is working, so you can wear this on this day, but the next day you can’t wear it because somebody else is working.’ The employees were on completely different pages.

“I think they need to update the policy. I think it needs to be non-discriminatory. I think that as a woman, specifically a Black woman, my body is constantly policed and over-sexualised, and that’s not fair to me.

“I think they need to take the initiative and figure out what they deem is or isn’t acceptable and let that be the standard across the board, period.”