A South Florida woman claims that Spirit Airlines, home of the “unbundled Bare Fare,” recently booted her from a flight due to her unbundled, bare fare.
The buxom 21-year-old was returning home to Hollywood, Fla. Sunday from a weekend trip to New Orleans, but was asked to get off the airplane before takeoff by Spirit flight attendants for, according to witnesses, displaying too much cleavage.
Cathy Supp, who didn’t know the woman, claims she was also removed from the flight for defending her from an increasingly hostile flight crew that first accused the woman of being drunk.
Supp posted about the experience on Facebook.
“After assuring all THREE flight attendants that although she & her companion had been finishing a beer before boarding, but was not drunk & would be fine, they left her alone for a few minutes, then came back and said her bosom was too exposed! Granted she was well endowed and wearing a low-cut top, but she was covered. They claimed they had had complaints,” she said in her Facebook post.
Supp doubts that.
“No one said a word,” she told The Daily Caller, “even if her endowments were more plumped up once seated in those seats.”
Woman kicked off plane (Local 10 News screencap)
On Facebook, Supp posted that “there were no nuns or Muslims on board and no one could see her in the center seat unless they tried anyway.”
Another Spirit passenger, Bob Kowaleski, claims to have sat in the window seat next to the woman.
“They embarrassed the young girl and [she] didn’t appear any more out of bounds than anyone else on flight,” Kowaleski posted on Facebook, adding that the flight attendants were “treating her like she was a street walker.
“I saw no potential problem with her.”
Supp said that despite repeatedly hiking her up her tank top to “cover more,” a male flight attendant continued to insist the woman would “have to leave the plane if she can’t get them [her breasts] covered.”
Donna Prieto, the woman’s mother, told TheDC that her daughter eventually resorted to covering her chest with the large coat she brought on board the plane.
Woman kicked off flight 2 (Local 10 News screencap)
Prieto said the ordeal left her daughter “distraught and embarrassed.”
Despite the outrage expressed online by other passengers, Spirit spokesperson Paul Berry claims that the incident was over the woman’s attitude, not her assets.
“Nobody was taken off a plane because of cleavage,” Berry told Local10 News. “People are taken off of planes because of their behavior.”
However, he does admit that the subject of cleavage did come up at one point.
“The flight attendant made that decision [to remove the woman], and as she was leaving, she [the flight attendant] said, ‘By the way, you might want to cover up.’ It was more of a personal statement to her.”
Berry insists that the woman was removed because she was drunk.
Supp isn’t buying it.
“They had settled the issue of her sobriety before coming around with this new requirement that she cover up more,” Supp said. “I thought the entire incident was over. The lady next to me was also horrified at the treatment and mentioned that the poor girl was crying.”
Supp said that when she offered the woman a tissue, a flight attendant told her she, too, could be removed from the plane.
“He never once gave me a direct instruction that I refused to follow that would be grounds for removal,” Supp said. “I was not a safety or health risk to anyone.
“When the gate agent and security came I thought they were only tossing her [the woman], and was ready to make a complaint on her behalf upon landing, however they took me, too.
“It was ridiculous.”