Source: AFP
A woman who says she was threatened to be kicked off a Delta Air Lines flight for not wearing a bra demanded a meeting with the company’s top boss on Thursday about a policy she says is discriminatory.
Lisa Archbold said she was wearing baggy jeans and a baggy white T-shirt — no bra — and claimed she was temporarily escorted off a flight by a female agent who asked her to cover up, even though her breasts were not visible.
“It felt like a scarlet letter was stuck on me,” Archbold, 38, told reporters in Los Angeles about the January incident.
“I felt it was a spectacle intended to punish me for not being a woman in the way he thought I should be as he scolded me outside the plane.”
Archbold, a DJ who was flying from conservative Salt Lake City in Utah to famously liberal San Francisco, claims a Delta agent told her her outfit was “revealing” and “offensive” and that it was the airline’s policy to passengers dressed like this are not allowed. .
But, the agent said, if she put a jacket over her T-shirt, she would be allowed to continue her journey.
Attorney Gloria Allred said she wrote to Delta on behalf of Archbold requesting a meeting with the company’s president to discuss the discriminatory policy.
“Male passengers are not required to cover their T-shirts with a shirt or jacket,” he said.
“Also, they don’t have to wear a bra to board or stay on a plane and women don’t have to wear one either.
“Last I checked, the Taliban are not in charge of the Delta.”
Allred said US federal rules allow airlines to remove passengers who pose a risk to the safety of the plane or its passengers, but that was clearly not the case with Archbold.
“Neither her breasts nor any other woman’s breasts have ever attempted to take over a plane,” he said.
“Breasts are not weapons of war and it is not a crime for a woman or a girl to have them.”
Allred said there are currently no plans to sue, and that all she and Archbold wanted was a meeting with Delta’s president to get assurances that their policies would be updated.
In response to questions from AFP, a company spokesman said: “Earlier this year, Delta representatives contacted this customer with an apology.”
Source: AFP