A former United Airlines flight attendant’s lawsuit claiming she was fired for her OnlyFans account – while the airline has allowed similar activities by male colleagues – is being allowed to move forward.

In 2015, Alexa Wawrzenski joined United Airlines as an LA-based flight attendant. She says she faced nearly constant remarks about her figure, with her petite waist and curvier hips drawing unwanted attention. Managers and coworkers reportedly commented on her “butt,” speculated about whether she had undergone surgeries, and a colleague complained she was “breaking necks” among male staff who turned to look at her. She says she followed all uniform rules, but she says she was frequently asked to change into a larger uniform to cover her figure.

In June 2020, United’s Ethics and Compliance Office received an anonymous tip about her OnlyFans, including photos of her in a flight attendant uniform and bikini shots on Instagram with a link to her subscription page.

The airline launched an investigation in July 2020 and managers grilled her for six hours about her social media presence and demanded full access to her OnlyFans. She refused, claiming her subscriber-only page was dedicated to “diet, fitness, and lifestyle,” and had nothing to do with United.

And, she says, male flight attendants post photos of themselves in tiny swimwear alongside their uniform pictures but don’t face the same discipline and that a supervisor told her the same standards do not apply.

She was told to delete all pictures of herself in uniform from her Instagram. She says she complied—but managers later claimed she missed one heavily filtered photo in which the faint outline of her uniform remained visible. According to court documents, that one lingering image sealed her fate.

Weeks after the investigation, United fired her, accusing her of breaching its social media policy, using the brand’s uniform to “solicit” content on a paid site, and disobeying orders to remove all uniform photos – citing a “conflict of interest” clause in its Code of Ethics that flight attendants cannot monetize adult images even tangentially connected to their airline roles.

The flight attendant filed suit in October 2020 in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County claiming gender discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in violation of California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. An LA trial court dismissed her claims on summary judgment but in October 2024 the California Court of Appeal’s Second District reversed.

The appellate court determined she showed enough evidence that United enforced its social media policy differently when it came to men, that comments about her waist-to-hips ratio and repeated forced uniform changes could amount to severe or pervasive harassment, and that her complaints were followed by potentially retaliatory discipline.

She seeks reinstatement, lost wages, and damages for emotional distress, while the airline stands by its original assertion that her OnlyFans promotion was not only a policy violation but also a reputational risk to the brand.

Several Delta flight attendants have also been fired for OnlyFans.

  • Accidentally having a uniform in the background of a video was enough. Delta expressly bars influencers from posting in uniform.
  • In another case reportedly their OnlyFans and Instagram accounts were connected, and the Instagram account mentioned Delta.
  • Also, another crewmember took “videos in his layover hotel and they tried to investigate him because he was using the layover hotel to make his videos.”
  • Often crewmembers, ostensibly friends, snitch.

In the early days of blogging, and before modern social media, Delta Air Lines flight attendant Ellen Simonetti became a poster child for the new online world colliding with work expectations. She started a blog, Queen of Sky: Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant in September 2003 but a year later was suspended and later fired for posing in uniform and on planes, combined with her online commentary (she never expressly identified her employer by name). Some of her photos were mildly suggestive. Part of the issue at the time was that in what was then a wild west of expectations, other flight attendants were escaping discipline for similar activities.

Ultimately there’s a niche for everything, as one American Airlines flight attendant was advising colleagues on how to successfully sell feet photos online – something that became popular during pandemic-era furloughs.

If fired for OnlyFans, the best advice might be to try to get a job with upstart Global Airlines because a key investor there is a co-founder of the adult monetization site.

(HT: Paddle Your Own Kanoo)

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