Brad Jayakody modeling his Transformers T-Shirt

LONDON: An airline passenger was threatened with arrest for wearing a T-shirt showing a cartoon robot brandishing a futuristic gun.

IT consultant Brad Jayakody was stopped at security checks at Heathrow’s infamous Terminal 5 and ordered to remove his ‘offensive’ Transformers T-shirt.

The 30-year-old Londoner was set to fly to Dusseldorf in Germany on business when he was confronted by security staff.

Mr Jayakody said the first guard started joking with him about the French Connection T-shirt which depicts a Transformers character on it.

"Then he explains that since Megatron is holding a gun, I’m not allowed to fly," he told the London Daily Mail.

"It’s a 40ft tall cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. There is no way this shirt is offensive in any way, and what I’m going to use the shirt to pretend I have a gun? "

Mr Jayakody decided to be cooperative when the supervisor arrived and reluctantly took off the T-shirt, replacing it with another less controversial shirt he lucky held in his carry on luggage.

A spokesman for Heathrow operator BAA 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.

"If it’s offensive, we don’t want other passengers upset."

He added that no official record of the incident was made and Mr Jayakody: "certainly didn’t make a formal complaint at the time."

Related:
Gun T-shirt ‘was a security risk’ (BBC)