How to get kicked off an airplane
Hell-bent on avoiding a week at your in-laws this holiday season? Here are six sure-fire ways to get yourself offloaded from an airplane faster than if you'd belted out Whitney Houston during the pre-flight safety demonstration.
6. Being too sexy
Too sexy for your shirt? Several airlines have clauses within their “contract of carriage” that allow them to give you the boot for wearing scandalous outfits. In fact, Southwest Airlines has a clause to eject passengers dressed in a “lewd, obscene, or patently offensive way”, and they use it often. In 2007, they removed a college student for her short skirt; in 2011, they refused to transport Green Day front-man Billie Joe Armstrong because his pants were too saggy; and last year, they kicked off a woman because her cleavage was deemed “inappropriate”.
5. Being too fat
It’s sad (and embarrassing) but true: if you can’t show the flight attendants that your armrest will go down and stay down, you may not be allowed to fly. An American woman died stranded in Hungary in 2012 after being denied a seat aboard three separate planes due to her size, and director Kevin Smith was removed from a flight for being overweight in 2010. Some airlines (cough, Samoa Air, cough) actually calculate your airfare by the pound; as the cost runs between 44 and 48 cents per pound, you might want to think twice about cronutting (yes, we're already making it a verb) prior to check-in.
4. Being too Alec Baldwin
Angry at the world after suffering at the hands of the TSA? Best to drop the ‘tude before arriving at the gate, as disobeying a flight attendant’s request is the quickest way to get kicked off a plane. Just ask Alec Baldwin, who wins the award for biggest a-hole after being legendarily escorted off an American Airlines flight in 2006 when he refused to shut off his phone. In his defense, though, Words With Friends is crazy-addictive.
3. Being too drunk
Bummed that your week in Panama City Beach is over, and you only hit Club La Vela once? Well, drowning those sorrows in booze before your flight home may well get you booted back to the terminal bar. If you want to knock back a few before takeoff, bring some eye drops, and pull it together man!
2. Being too stinky
Ok, this one makes total sense. Thankfully, almost every airline maintains a clause in their rules about denying access to passengers with “offensive odors”. So please, do us all a favor and at least take a sponge-bath in the men's room after your pre-flight workout, m’kay?
1. Going barefoot
Lost your Vibram FiveFingers at Burning Man? Fair enough. Just don’t try to stay in touch with your um, natural side when you fly home commercially. There’s no airline we could find that allows passengers to travel sans footwear, which -- if you agree with #2 -- is most certainly a good thing.