It doesn’t take much to get thrown off an airplane these days, as Kyla Ebbert found out when a Southwest Airlines employee told her she was too bare for the air. Two months later, she’s still trying to figure out what was wrong with her outfit.
It was a lot more clothing than the 23-year-old college student wears on her job as a Hooters waitress. Her mother, Michele Ebbert, said she would have told her daughter if the outfit was inappropriate.
“But her outfit is fine, Michele Ebbert told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer. “She looks like every other college girl in San Diego.”
Not according to a Southwest employee identified only as “Keith,” who approached Ebbert after she had taken her seat on the plane and was listening to the flight attendants go through their pre-departure routine.
He asked her to step off of the plane and when they were in the jetway, he told her that her clothing was inappropriate and asked her to change her clothes.
“He told
me, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to take a later flight. You’re
dressed inappropriately. This is a family airline. You’re dressed too
provocative to fly on this flight,’ ” she told Lauer.
“I said, ‘What part of it, the shirt, the
skirt? Which part?’ “ Ebbert continued, recounting her conversation
with Keith about her outfit. “And he said, ‘The whole thing.’“ I said,
‘I didn’t bring any luggage with me. I don’t have anything to change
into. What can I do to make sure I can get onto that flight?’ I had a
doctor’s appointment. I had to be there.”
“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.
A compromise was finally reached when Ebbert promised to pull up her top, which wasn’t showing cleavage to begin with, and pull down her tiny skirt.
Ebbert went back onto the plane and to her seat, feeling that every eye on the plane was staring at her.
“I was humiliated. I was embarrassed. They all heard him lecturing me,” she said.
