A female flight attendant is suing US airlines JetBlue and Delta after being denied access to a flight because her outfit wasn’t provocative enough.

Karin Keegan, a 37-year-old flight attendant with Delta, said a male JetBlue worker wouldn’t let her on a flight in October 2007 because she wasn’t dressed provocatively enough, then allowed other flight attendants with less seniority to board the plane.

JetBlue has an agreement with Delta to ferry its flight attendants to job assignments on a standby basis.

“Keegan changed into more provocative clothes, but (the employee) told her she was too late to board the plane and should have dressed like that before,” said the lawsuit, which was filed Friday in Pittsburgh federal court, Associated Press reports.

“He wanted her to change to a lower-cut shirt and tighter pants, and wear more makeup before letting her on the plane,” Keegan’s attorney, Samuel Cordes, said Monday. Delta and JetBlue officials refused to intercede when she complained, the lawsuit said.

Cordes said Keegan is losing income, though he wouldn’t specify how much, because she has stopped taking JetBlue flights to job assignments so she can avoid harassment by the male employee.

Keegan sued after complaining to the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. The agency gave Keegan right-to-sue letters late last year.

Cordes said JetBlue told the commission it is not liable because Keegan is not an employee. But federal law enables employees to sue over workplace harassment even when they are not directly employed by the alleged harasser, Cordes said.

Similar suits are often filed by nurses against doctors when harassment occurs in a hospital, he said. Courts have found nurses can sue doctors for workplace harassment, even though the nurses are employed by the hospital, Cordes said.


It is not the first time JetBlue has hit controversy in recent times. Earlier this month, the airline was forced to pay a passenger US$240,000 in compensation, after ordering the passenger to cover his shirt because it featured Arabic script.

In May last year, the airline was sued by a passenger who claimed he was forced give up his seat to a flight attendant and sit on the plane’s toilet for three hours on a trip from San Diego to New York.

A New York City man is suing JetBlue Airways Corporation for more than $US2 million because he says a pilot made him give up his seat to a flight attendant and sit on the toilet for more than three hours on a flight from California.

Gokhan Mutlu, of Manhattan’s Inwood section, says in court papers the pilot told him to “go ‘hang out’ in the bathroom” about 90 minutes into the San Diego to New York flight because the flight attendant complained that the “jump seat” she was assigned was uncomfortable, the lawsuit said.

Mutlu was traveling on a a “buddy pass” – a standby travel voucher that JetBlue employees give to friends – from New York to San Diego on February 16, and returned to New York on February 23, the lawsuit said.

Initially, Mutlu was told a flight attendant had taken the last seat on the plane, but then he was advised she would sit in the employee “jump seat”, meaning he could have the last seat, the lawsuit said.

The pilot told him one hour into the five-hour flight that he would have to relinquish the seat to the flight attendant, court papers say. But the pilot said that Mutlu could not sit in the jump seat because only JetBlue employees were permitted to sit there, the lawsuit said.

When Mutlu expressed reluctance to go sit in the bathroom, the pilot, who was not named in the lawsuit, told him that “he was the pilot, that this was his plane, under his command that (Mutlu) should be grateful for being on board”, the lawsuit said.

When the aircraft hit turbulence and passengers were directed to return to their seats, “the plaintiff had no seat to return to, sitting on a toilet stool with no seat belts”, court papers say. Some time later, a male flight attendant knocked on the restroom door and told Mutlu he could return to his original seat, court papers say.

Mutlu’s lawsuit, filed Friday in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court, says JetBlue negligently endangered him by not providing him with a seat with a safety belt or harness, in violation of federal law. A JetBlue spokesman declined comment on the lawsuit on Monday.

AP