A man was barred from boarding his plane this week at Heathrow Airport because guards objected to the cartoon on his t-shirt. Brad Jayakody, was told that he should change and take off the Transformers t-shirt which depicted a cartoon gun, if he wanted to catch his flight from Terminal 5.

The 30-year-old IT consultant was on his way to boarding a British Airways flight to Dusseldorf with four colleagues when he was stopped. He requested to meet with the chief of security, thinking that someone higher in the management chain would be more sensible on the issue, however that was not the case.

The security chief supported the decision of the guards in the Terminal and threatened to arrest Brad if he didn’t change the shirt.

Brad was wearing a shirt with a character from the Transformer’s film on the front. Optimus Prime was on the shirt. The Bayswater, West London resident described his clothes: : “It’s a cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. What was I going to do, use the shirt to pretend I have a gun? I was flabbergasted. I thought the supervisor would come over and see sense, but he didn’t. After I changed he said if I changed back I would be arrested.”

A spokesperson for the British Airways Authority, who operates Heathrow, also backed the decision of the security chief. The spokesperson said: “If a T-shirt had a rude word or a bomb on it for example, a passenger may be asked to remove it. We are investigating what happened to see if it came under this category.”

www.britishairways.com