Billie Joe Armstrong Kicked Off Airplane

News Article
SPIN.com
September 6, 2011
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Not everybody was sitting pretty over the holiday weekend. Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong says wearing his pants too low kept him off his Southwest Airlines flight.

Armstrong aired his frustration in a Twitter message. "Just got kicked off a southwest flight because my pants sagged too low!" he wrote Thursday night. "What the fuck? No joke!"

As ABC reports, the singer for the San Francisco Bay Area pop-punk band was boarding a plane from Oakland to Burbank, CA, when a flight attendant came up and said to pull up his pants. According to an ABC producer who was on the flight, Armstrong at first brushed off the request, saying, "Don't you have better things to worry about than that?" After the flight attendant reiterated her instruction and warned Armstrong he could be kicked off the plane, Armstrong reportedly said, "I'm just trying to get to my fucking seat." At that point, Armstrong and a traveling companion were given the boot.

Southwest Airlines quickly replied to Armstrong's Twitter complaint with its own message. "Very sorry for your experience tonight, someone from our Customer Relations Team will reach out to you to get more details," the company said.

Armstrong ultimately opted to take the next flight, Southwest later told ABC. "As soon as we became aware of what had happened, we reached out to apologize for this customer's experience," a Southwest representative said. "He elected to take the next flight. We followed up with this customer and involved employees to get more details and, in our latest conversations, understand from the customer the situation was resolved to his satisfaction."

Last month, Green Day treated fans in Costa Mesa, CA, to one of the band's smallest club gigs in years. The set included 15 new songs, two of which resourceful fans managed to capture on video despite strict security for the event. Hear acoustic ballad "Amy" (a likely Amy Winehouse tribute) and riotous punk tune "Last Gang in Town" here.