A passenger was recently escorted off a Delta Airlines flight due to his contentious choice of clothing. The man sported a shirt with an image of ex-President Donald Trump making an offensive gesture, accompanied by a phrase from a well-known internet video. The incident took place on a Saturday morning at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport and was later posted on the Reddit group r/delta.
The shirt portrayed Trump wearing sunglasses that resembled the American flag and making a disrespectful hand gesture. The airline deemed the shirt inappropriate. The phrase on the shirt, “Hawk tuah spit on that thang,” is a nod to a viral internet video. A video showed the passenger walking down the aisle with his luggage, declaring that he was being removed from the flight because of his shirt.
The passenger also made a remark about a female flight attendant named Wendy, who was guiding him off the aircraft. The Reddit user who uploaded the video, SKBeachGirl, mentioned that the man was asked to change his shirt or risk being removed from the plane after a complaint was lodged about his clothing. The man complied by reversing his shirt, and the flight continued to board.
However, just before departure, a Delta employee boarded the plane and escorted the man off the flight. According to SKBeachGirl, the man had flipped his shirt back to its original, contentious side.
Delta Airlines maintains the right to remove passengers from its flights for a variety of reasons, including if a passenger’s “conduct, attire, hygiene or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers,” as outlined in Delta’s Contract of Carriage. The airline has yet to comment on this particular incident.
This is not the first time Delta has been embroiled in controversy over its dress code. Earlier this year, a female passenger alleged she was nearly removed from a Delta flight for not wearing a bra. The woman, a DJ named Lisa Archbold, claimed that she was briefly escorted off a plane from Salt Lake City to San Francisco because a gate agent found her attire “revealing” and “offensive,” even though her breasts were not visible.