In two recent cases — one involving a black football player who was removed from a US Airways flight because he refused to pull up his pants and the other involving a lesbian actress who was escorted off a Southwest flight after a request to stop kissing her girlfriend escalated into a heated exchange — the incidents were soon posted on the Web, protests held and boycotts threatened.  The result is a public debate over whether there is a right to fly. The answer, according to courts and the Department of Transportation, is no.  “An airline can refuse to carry a passenger for any reason, so long as it is not discriminatory,” said Bill Mosley, a spokesman for the Transportation Department. He referred to a federal aviation statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of “race, color, national origin, religion, sex or ancestry.” Airlines can remove passengers for many reasons, which are spelled out in the fine print on the back of the boarding card and open to interpretation.  “We deal with this every day,” said an executive of a major American carrier who asked not to be identified because the airline did not want to go on the record about how it handles these situations. If a passenger “is a security threat or if they are carrying a communicable disease or if they smell bad or if they are being unruly — there are a number of things that would preclude them from being able to fly.”  What has changed in recent years is the highly visible nature of some passenger-airline disputes — details of which are sometimes on the Internet while the plane is still at the gate. Kyla Ebbert, a waitress in California, appeared on several national news programs in 2007 after she was told by a flight attendant on Southwest Airlines that her skimpy outfit was potentially offensive to other passengers. Rather than go home, change and take a later flight, she draped a blanket over her legs, then did the rounds of morning talk shows.  The path is now well trodden by others who have had a brush with the arbiters of airplane decorum.  “Whether it’s a letter to a company or a social media issue, people have agendas they push through for a lot of different reasons,” John McDonald, vice president for communications for US Airways, said in an interview.  Mr. McDonald said that was the case after US Airways removed a University of New Mexico football player, Deshon Marman, in June, after he refused to pull up his drooping pajama pants. Video of the exchange was posted on You Tube, prompting a demonstration in San Francisco contending that the airline’s action was racially biased.  Publicity over the Marmon case prompted another US Airways passenger, Jill Tarlow, to step forward with her own allegation. Ms. Tarlow said six days before Mr. Marman was removed, she was on a US Airways flight with a man who was dressed in women’s underwear, stockings and a see-through shrug. Ms. Tarlow sent a photo of the man to the airline and posted it on the Internet.  Mr. McDonald responded that the man was a frequent traveler on US Airways but said he was not allowed to board the flight until he covered up.  Frustration with the seeming arbitrariness of airline decision-making is just one part of the problem, said Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center in California. The other is diminishing respect for the sensitivities of other passengers. “Social media is shining a light on a problem that’s growing and that we haven’t been paying enough attention to,” Ms. Rutledge said. “We as a people have taken to this idea of ‘what I’m entitled to’ without considering how to respect what the other person is entitled to.”  Many airlines have found themselves in the spotlight for taking passengers off airplanes, but Southwest Airlines has removed some celebrities, which keeps it in the news. In addition to the short-skirt affair, which resulted in Ms. Ebbert’s appearance in Playboy, the carrier ejected the actress Leisha Hailey last month after a request by a flight attendant for her to stop kissing her girlfriend turned into a profanity-laced exchange. Southwest is known as well for requiring plus-size passengers, like the Hollywood director Kevin Smith, to either buy a second ticket or get off the plane.  “One of the complaints we see on a regular basis is from customers who do not have access to their full seat because of the size of the customer next to them,” said Chris Mainz, a spokesman for Southwest.  That the war over conflicting standards of courtesy and behavior is being fought on airliners isn’t surprising, Ms. Rutledge said, because people feel a powerlessness boarding an airplane. “The airplane environment is one where people have higher anxiety levels, and prickliness is heightened,” she said.  Airline executives agree. “With security and everything else,” Mr. McDonald said, “being on an airplane is very different than hopping in a car or taking a bus.”  Mr. Mainz of Southwest said: “Unlike a restaurant or movie theater, you cannot exit an airplane at 30,000 feet, so it is our duty to defuse a potential disruption before an airplane leaves the ground.”  With that in mind, the courts have given flight crews wide latitude, even when a review suggests the airline employees erred in removing a passenger.  “If you’re going to push the limits, you’re going to run the risk of being denied travel, because it’s all up to the cabin crew or the gate agents,” said Peter A. McLauchlan, a partner with the transportation law firm Gardere Wynne Sewell. “They have a nice laundry list of what could be offensive to other passengers, and airline safety gives them lots of cover.”
In the past, when passengers were removed from flights, only fellow travelers knew; now social media exposes these disputes to a worldwide audience.