Spirit Airlines has disciplined a flight attendant after a passenger was angered about a button she wore on her uniform that said, “Black Lives Matter, White Supremacy Kills.”
“I said to her, ‘All lives matter,'” recalled Robert Coyle, who was visiting relatives in Largo from Houston. “And she said, ‘I disagree with you, I disagree with you on so many levels.’ And then she went into some sort of memorized, ‘I really can’t speak politically while I am in uniform.'”
Though he agreed to delete it, he still says she stopped her safety demonstration to ask the pilot to take the plane back to the gate to kick him off. He was able to recover the picture later and shared it with FOX 13 News.
“No company should allow that to happen,” said Coyle, “unless they are willing to accept the consequences for that happening.”
Indeed, Spirit says their flight attendant broke policy of not wearing anything political, religious or inflammatory on their uniform.
They offered Coyle undisclosed restitution and took undisclosed disciplinary action on the unidentified flight attendant, who’d been with the airline 14 months.
Coyle says he is satisfied with Spirit’s response.
“If you have something offensive on your uniform, you are going to offend customers,” said Coyle, “and customers pay the bills.”