In November 2000 we printed three letters from readers who had been discreetly reading Playboy on a plane when a flight attendant told them to put it away or face arrest. At least one attendant told a passenger on a D.C. to Dallas flight that the mere presence of the magazine created a hostile work environment for her and that the FAA bans “sexually explicit material” aboard planes (there is no such regulation). Another AA attendant from a Miami to Santo Domingo flight later saw the passenger with his wife in a tourist hotel, slapped him in the head and yelled, “I can’t believe you are so disrespectful of your wife to read that magazine in front of her!” Meanwhile, a Southwest attendant on a Vegas to LA flight told a passenger, “You cannot read that filthy smut on this airplane.”
At the time we phoned AA, Southwest and every other major airline to see if any had policies that banned passengers from reading Playboy. All insisted they did not. AA said it has investigated the hotel incident but wouldn’t tell us anything more about it.
We published another letter in October 2005. This time a Southwest attendant on a flight from Albuquerque to Vegas told a passenger, “You need to put that away. I think it’s inappropriate.” She then claimed she had asked the captain about it, and that unless the passenger complied, airport security would be waiting for him upon arrival. That prompted a letter from Playmate Victoria Fuller (Miss January 1996), who recalled that in 1999 she and her husband had been removed from an America West flight when they refused to put away the new issue of Playboy. (They took a later flight but waited until after take-off to pull out the magazine.)
We called the airlines a second time. Same story. No official policies; passengers can read any newsstand publication they like. After a few years of quiet, we thought maybe a memo had gone out telling certain nosy flight attendants to cool it. But, alas, this email arrived recently from Richard Ulmer of Tampa:“This past November, I flew American Airlines Flight 842 from Dallas to Tampa. As we taxied for take-off a female flight attendant came walking down the aisle doing her preflight check, saw that I was reading an issue of Playboy (as I’ve done on airplanes without incident for 25 years) and ordered me to put it away. I asked her why, and she said that the magazine was offensive. When I asked to whom, since no one sitting near me had said a word and may not even have been aware of what I was reading, she replied, ‘To me.’ She told me if I didn't put the magazine away, she would have the captain return to the gate and have me arrested. I was embarrassed and humiliated by this entire episode, and believe this to be a violation of my First Amendment rights.”
Ulmer has twice written to AA to complain but received no response. For the hell of it, we contacted American and were informed for a third time that passengers are free to read Playboy on AA flights. “Unless it involves a complaint from another passenger, a flight attendant should not approach a customer about what they are reading,” says AA spokesman Tim Wagner. “This more often comes up these days with people watching R-rated movies on their laptops.”
However, Wagner notes that, right or wrong, if you are asked by an attendant to put the magazine away, you must comply. As frustrating as it may be, we strongly recommend this as well. First, even if you want to make a federal case of it, our legal counsel notes that the free speech issues here aren’t crystal clear – despite the fact the airlines are regulated by the U.S. government as common carriers and receive billions of dollars in subsidies, courts have treated the inside of a jet much differently than the inside of the terminal. Second, we see no reason to cause your fellow passengers to be delayed, or to get yourself arrested, over an argument you can’t win. But you can always write us to let us know, and you can always complain to the airline that you’d feel more comfortable if the attendants concentrated on what must be far more important tasks before and during the flight than monitoring what passengers are reading.
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Comments on this entry:
Cool, Mr. Hefner looks like he's flying high in the friendly skies.
I'm bringing the Kim Kardashian issue with me when I go to Seattle next months and will issue a full report.
If I had Cynthia Maddox sitting next to me on a plane, as Hugh Hefner does in that photo, I don't think I would spend the flight with my nose buried in a magazine of **any** sort.
On January 29th, American Airlines called my house and apologized for the incident that occurred on their flight from Dallas to Tampa , and would investigate the matter fully. I was not available to take their call in person, but my wife relayed their message to me.
Richard Ulmer