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A woman has recounted her experience nearly being denied boarding on a Delta flight because of how she was dressed.
Lauren Phillips posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, a recount of the situation in a thread. “The power trip these employees have at@Delta is crazy!” the tweet began. “Here I am, first class and I get threatened by an employee that she won’t let me on the plane because of the way I’m dressed. Humiliates me in front of everyone! I’ve never had a problem with what I wear with other airlines. Never again.”
The tweet was shared to Phillips’ 40,000 followers on what she describes as her “safe for work account”. She also has a separate account, which she claims is “not safe for work,” with more than 500,000 followers.
In the thread, she then recalled how embarrassed she felt about being called out on her outfit choice. “Here is the employee at Delta,” the next tweet read as Phillips showed a clip of the flight attendant who allegedly made the comment about her outfit.
Phillips never said what she was wearing at the airport, but did share a photo captioned, “What I wasn’t wearing,” in which she could be seen wearing a tank top.
According to Delta airlines’ Contract of Carriage, the airline “may refuse to transport or may remove passengers from its aircraft” if they are barefoot or “when the passenger’s conduct, attire, hygiene or odour creates an unreasonable risk of offence or annoyance to other passengers”.
Delta also tweeted once in 2017 that it doesn’t “have an item-specific clothing policy, but we encourage no swimwear, sleepwear or underwear as your outerwear”.
In response to Phillips’ thread, many of her followers were apologetic for the way she was treated. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Truly unprofessional behaviour on her part,” one reply read. “Well, let’s hope that the company sees this and reaches out to make amends with you. That should not happen. Sorry, that it did,” another reply agreed.
This isn’t the first time Phillips has gone after an airline publicly. Last year, she posted another video to X, complaining about how American Airlines treats animals. In the video, she explained that she was travelling with her service animal and paid for him to have extra amenities, claiming her animal was then denied them.
“Sounds like animal cruelty to me, don’t you think?” she said in the video. American Airlines did end up responding to the tweet with the hopes of resolving the issue. “Your comments concern us and we’d like to look into this in more detail. Please DM what happened and the record locator,” the airline replied.
The Independent has contacted Phillips and Delta for comment.
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