Green Day mainman Billie Joe Armstrong was asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight over Labor Day Weekend after refusing a request from a flight attendant. The request? To pull up his pants.
Apparently the singer/guitarist's trousers were sagging a bit too low for comfort upon boarding the flight, and was asked by a flight attendant to pull them up.
Thankfully, an ABC reporter was on the plane at the time, and was able to capture quotes for posterity.
"Don't you have better things to worry about than that?" asked Armstrong, before then trying to take his seat. When he was warned that he could be thrown off the plane, the guitarist simply pleaded: "I'm just trying to get to my fucking seat."
Armstrong was then promptly asked to leave the flight, opting to take the next flight without further incident.
"As soon as we became aware of what had happened, we reached out to apologize for this customer's experience," said a Southwest representative. "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."
Billie Joe's sole comment on the incident came via his Twitter account, which read: "Just got kicked off a southwest flight because my pants sagged too low! What the fuck? No joke!"
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Say what you will about rock stars and planes -- Izzy, we're looking at you -- but ultimately Billie Joe handled himself like any weary traveler during a holiday weekend probably would have.
Josh Hart is a former web producer and staff writer for Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado magazines (2010–2012). He has since pursued writing fiction under various pseudonyms while exploring the technical underpinnings of journalism, now serving as a senior software engineer for The Seattle Times.
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