Earlier today Celebitchy sent a message to British Airways regarding their employee who would not let Joel Madden board a flight until he covered his tattooed arms.

She sent the following message to British Airways Public Relations via e-mail and are waiting for a response:

Dear British Airways public relations,
On a Saturday flight from Heathrow to Lisboa, Portugal, rocker Joel Madden was told by a British Airways staff member to cover up his arm tattoos before boarding. Madden has tattoos of religious figures on both of his forearms. He quietly complied with the request although he told the BA person that he felt he was being discriminated against. Madden immediately posted this on his Twitter, which has nearly 100,000 followers.

Does British Airways have a policy of making all airline passengers cover visible tattoos or was this an isolated incident? Will the staff member who did this be disciplined if it was not in accordance with airline policy?

[Sent via e-mail to BA Public Relations, at media.relations@ba.com]

In the article, Celebitchy proposed that it was likely just the one British Airways employee who had an attitude problem instead of an actual policy by the airline. Not surprisingly, she was correct. We just got a response from BA.

Katie,

British Airways does not have a policy against tattoos.

We are speaking to the staff member involved.

Regards,
Euan Fordyce

[Sent via e-mail by BA Public Relations, at media.relations@ba.com]

Joel noted in his Twitter account of the incident that there is nothing offensive about his tattoos (presumably meaning there’s no nudity, violence, curse words – they appear to be religious in nature), so it’s hard to guess what this employee’s problem was. It must have been with tattoos in general. Joel also noted that another employee was disagreeing with the first – though obviously the insistent, anti-tattoo guy won. I can’t help but wonder how the guy thought he’d get away with that. Unfortunately British Airways didn’t say what’s going to happen to the employee, but I hope it’s more than just a simple reprimand. The guy was out of line and had no right to enforce his personal preferences as though they were rules.

Here’s Joel leaving Ron Herman at Fred Segal in Los Angeles on January 7th. Image thanks to WENN.com .