Saudi Airlines Passenger Stops Flight By Being A Huge Sexist

Saudi Arabia is a special place. It has many venerated traditions, one of which unfortunately, is that every woman must have a male guardian, or mahram. The mahram is usually a woman's husband or father, and their permission is required for most things, including travel. Yes, believe it or not, this is a real thing. In 2013.

But Saudi Arabia's ridiculously strict woman-oppressing rules have been relaxed a little bit recently, allowing women to travel domestically without mahram permission. That didn't stop a particularly conservative passenger on Saudi Airlines Flight VS 1108 from holding up a flight from Jeddah to Dammam because the flight attendant wasn't accompanied by her mahram.

As if it isn't bad enough that the Saudi government won't let women drive and sends text messages to mahrams when their chattels leave the country, the man insisted that every woman on the flight needed her mahram present. You really can't make up this kind of shit.

The joke turned out to be on the old sexist though. Other passengers on the plane seemed to care more that their flight would be late than they did about keeping archaic oppressions intact, and began arguing with the man. Finally, the pilot called airport security, who removed the man and let the flight crew get on with things without bringing a crew of mahrams aboard.

Photo credit: Associated Press

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