On 30 October an American Airlines passenger got a nasty surprise when she was asked to leave her flight because of the t-shirt she was wearing. Flight attendants deemed the t-shirt to be offensive because it was emblazoned with the words “Hail Satan”.

On 30 October, 49-year-old Swati Runi Goyal had boarded her flight from Key West, Florida to Las Vegas along with her husband. The pair were already seated when a flight attendant approached them and asked Swati to change her t-shirt, which had been deemed offensive.

The t-shirt in question had the words “Hail Satan, Est. 666” printed across the front.

She was given the choice of either swapping her t-shirt or leaving the plane altogether. According to a BuzzFeed News report on the incident, Goyal and her husband refused to swap the t-shirt when first asked.

“We initially just thought it was a joke. But he repeated the directive, and there was another female crew member who was behind him with her arms crossed looking very angry,” Goyal said.

“Dress appropriately”

After Goyal initially refused the flight crew’s requests, they repeated that the couple would not be able to fly unless the t-shirt was removed. According to Goyal, the flight attendant said,

“Your shirt is offensive. Do you know what that means?”. In response, she said, “I’m a foreign-born minority woman, I understand ‘offensive,’ and this shirt is not offensive.”

After resisting the flight attendant’s request, the flight was delayed from taking off until the couple either left or covered up the t-shirt.

According to Goyal, she had worn the same t-shirt numerous times before without ever having issues with flight attendants. In fact, people would often compliment her on the t-shirt, saying they found it amusing.

Simple Flying has reached out to American Airlines for comment on the incident. The airline has not yet been able to respond, but we will update the article once we receive a response.

Currently, American Airlines’ website says that passengers should avoid “offensive clothing” and “dress appropriately”. This clearly leaves a lot of wiggle room when it comes to flight crew determining what is offensive or not.

What happened in the end?

After first refusing, Goyal and her husband realized they would not be able to fly unless the t-shirt was changed.

Goyal’s husband had multiple layers of clothing on, so, fortunately, he was able to give his wife a garment to cover the t-shirt. Goyal said the flight crew avoided eye contact with her for the rest of the flight.

After the flight, Goyal reached out to American Airlines customer service to complain about the incident. The initial response she received was an email saying that the airline has “policies in place to ensure that no passengers are subjected to objectionable situations while on board.”

After tweeting about her experience, Goyal then received an additional response from the airline. Discussing the incident with BuzzFeed News, American Airlines spokesperson, Ross Feinstein, said:

“We apologize to Ms. Goyal for her experience, and we are reaching out to her to understand what occurred.”