Southwest Airlines was once well known for hiring only female flight attendants and dressing them in hot pants. At least one of its pilots apparently dislikes that it's not like that anymore.
"Eleven f***ing over-the-top f***ing a** f***ing homosexuals and a granny. Eleven! I mean, think of the odds of that," the unidentified pilot said during a March flight.
He was talking to his co-pilot after take off from Houston about his attempts at having a nightlife with Southwest Airlines crew members laying over in Chicago, a city he called "party land."
The pilot labeled his Chicago-based flight crew as a "continuous stream of gays and grannies and grandes."
"So in six months I went to the bar three times; in six months, three times. Once with the granny and the f*g, and I wished I hadn't gone," he said.
What the pilot didn't apparently know what that everything he was saying was being transmitted over an open microphone on the air traffic control frequency. Controllers and pilots heard it all and tried several times to curb the dialogue.
"OK, someone has a stuck mic and telling us about all their endeavors and we don't need to hear that," a controller is heard saying.
The airline suspended the pilot without pay, forced him to take sensitivity training and the put him back in the cockpit.
In a statement, the airline said the actions of the pilot are, "without question, inconsistent with the professional behavior and overall respect that we require from our employees."
TWU Local 556, which says it represents 9,400 flight attendants at Southwest Airlines, said the attendants are "deeply disappointed and angered by the insensitive and unprofessional comments," CNN reported.
Houston television station KPRC has the pilot's full tirade on its website.
