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Man booted from Spirit Airlines flight for ‘excessively low’ pants

Baggy pants may not be everyone's sartorial cup of tea, but one American airline carrier has discovered that loose linens can trigger more than a fashion eyesore.

As the Chicago Tribune reports, Spirit Airlines booted a man from a Chicago-to-Orlando flight this weekend.

The catalyst? The man's "excessively low" pants that Spirit Airlines spokesperson Missy Pinson says were "hanging below his buttocks" and giving other passengers a clear view of his underwear preferences, though no skin.

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"We have a lot of customers on the plane, a lot of children on the plane," she tells CBS Chicago.

"Our flight attendant asked him if he would kindly pull (his pants) up so that they were at a more appropriate level."

He refused and flight attendants claim the man became "verbally abusive" after they asked him to put a belt on it.

Though the airline dress code demands passengers wear shoes and "adequate clothing" — a vague description that demands individual assessment — they draw the line at disorderly or abusive conduct.

A law enforcement official escorted the man and his female companion from the plane and the pair was put on the next flight to Florida. No word on whether he changed his wardrobe.

Though it made the news, this is far from the first time a customer has been kicked off his or her flight for an ill-fated style choice.

Green Day frontman Billy Joe Armstrong had to find another way home last year when a Southwest flight attendant demanded that he pull his pants up, to which he replied, "Don't you have better things to do than worry about that?"

To her credit, she didn't finish her sentence with, "like a big boy." To his, he didn't follow up with "don't you know who I am?"

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And lest you believe airlines only discriminate against the male anatomy, Southwest made headlines again in June after removing a well-endowed woman whom they believed should have done a better job at hiding her breasts.

The woman, who didn't want to be named, was wearing a cotton dress, an open flannel shirt and a scarf -- the provocativeness of which you can judge for yourself here.

Her attire was deemed "inappropriate" and after she refused to button up her shirt on a sweltering hot day, she and her breasts were asked to leave.

"I didn't want to let the representative's Big Feelings about my breasts change the way I intended to board my flight," she later told Jezebel.

Canadian passengers won't find the same strictness whilst traversing the northern skies.

The Canadian Press reports that three of the country's top carriers — Air Canada, WestJet and Porter — don't enforce an official dress code.

At the same time, travel marketer Laurel Mayne advises, basic common sense should prevail when dressing for a flight.

Among the dos: dress appropriately for your purpose and your locale. Businesspeople should be a little more formally decked out, while people headed to more conservative places should cover up.

Among the don'ts: just because you're headed to the beach doesn't mean you have to dress for the beach en route. You'll have plenty of time to slip into your sarong before you hit the sand.

What do you think? Should airlines apply a strict dress code or is this just another case of much ado about nothing? Sound off in the comments below.