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Southwest To Passenger: Lose T-Shirt Or Leave

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The Associated Press

Published: October 5, 2007

TAMPA - Southwest Airlines on Friday was trying to contact a Largo passenger to apologize after an employee forced him to change out of a sexually suggestive T-shirt or risk getting thrown off the plane.

The incident Sunday in Columbus, Ohio, came after Southwest Airlines created a public uproar by telling a woman on a flight in July that her outfit was too revealing for her to fly.

Joe Winiecki, 39, a radiographer at Bayfront Medical Center, said he was sitting in the last row of a Columbus-to-Tampa flight when an employee told him he had to change his T-shirt, turn it inside out or get off the plane.

The shirt, bought in the Virgin Islands, uses sexual double entendre to promote a fictional fishing tackle shop. The largest lettering reads "Master Baiter."

Winiecki argued that the airline was violating his right to free speech but changed rather than risk getting kicked off the flight and missing a day of work.

"It's really disappointing in this country when I can't travel from Ohio to Florida with the clothes on my back," Winiecki said. "Who's to say what's offensive and what's not?"

Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said Friday the employee made a mistake because the Dallas-based airline does not have a dress code.

Mainz said the airline has been trying to get in touch with Winiecki to apologize since Thursday, when it left a message for him on his phone. It continued to call him on Friday but had not made contact with him as of early Friday afternoon.

"We're trying to reach out to Joe to apologize to him for the situation he encountered,'' Mainz said. "It's one of those things when employees make judgment calls, and sometimes we make mistakes. So when that happens, we definitely learn from it, and we want to reach out to the customer and make it right.''

The issue of in-flight attire moved into the national spotlight when San Diego college student Kyla Ebbert showed up for a Southwest flight in July wearing a denim miniskirt and a summer sweater over a tank top.

An employee objected and asked her to change or leave the plane and get new clothes. Ebbert was allowed to fly after agreeing to alter her outfit. The airline later apologized, offered Ebbert free tickets and tried to make light of the mix-up in humorous advertising. Ebbert declined the tickets.

After the Ebbert encounter, Southwest President Colleen Barrett sent employees a generally worded e-mail reminding them that the airline has no dress code, Mainz said. Southwest has more than 33,000 employees in 64 cities and serves nearly 100 million customers a year, Mainz said.

Southwest, like other airlines, has language in its contract of carriage it reserves the right to deny service to customers who are abusive or threatening, or whose clothing is "lewd, obscene or patently offensive."

Airline officials have discussed giving employees more specific examples of offensive and allowable dress, Mainz said.

Tribune Reporter Carlos Moncada contributed to this report.

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