AN air passenger was ordered to take off a bizarre T-shirt praising the devil after being warned she faced being booted off her flight.
Swati Runi Goyal, 49, boarded the Las Vegas-bound jet in Florida wearing a black shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Hail Satan’.
The black shirt also included the text ‘Est. 666’ and an upside-down cross – a sinister symbol of the occult.
Goyal was sitting next to her husband on the American Airlines jet when a steward told her to either remove the shirt or get off the plane.
“The gentleman asked me if I understood what ‘offensive’ meant,” Goyal told the New York Post.
“I said, ‘I’m a foreign-born minority woman. I know what my T-shirt means and my T-shirt is not offensive.’”
Goyal said she is both an atheist and a member of the Satanic Temple but says she is not a devil worshipper.
“It’s usually met with giggles and thumbs up from people who get the irony of the T-shirt,” she said.
The vegan said she became a supporter of the Satanic Temple because it shows “kindness to all creatures.”
“I’m not goth. I don’t have piercings. I wasn’t wearing a shirt that had a goat being beheaded on it,” she told Buzzfeed.
Eventually Goyal took off the shirt and wore a spare one her husband was carrying, but only after the flight was delayed.
She said she decided to post her story to highlight religious freedom.
“I’m really trying to make some good deeds come out of this. This is really about religious discrimination,” Goyal said.
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American Airlines has since apologised for the incident – despite its website clearly stating passengers are required to avoid “offensive clothing,”
“We apologise to Ms Goyal for her experience, and we are reaching out to her to understand what occurred,” said a spokesperson.
The company also added “discrimination has no place at American Airlines” in a tweeted response to Goyal’s Twitter post about the ordeal.