Green Day singer booted off flight

Los Angeles - Green Day rocker Billie Joe Armstrong has complained that he was booted from a Southwest Airlines flight in Oakland, California, because of the way he wore his pants.

Armstrong, 39, said on the website Twitter on Thursday: "Just got kicked off a Southwest flight because my pants sagged too low!..."

The flight was going from Oakland, California, to the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, said Brad Hawkins, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines.

Cindy Qiu, an associate producer at Bay area television station ABC7/KGO-TV, was on the flight and described the incident on her company's website.

She said that Armstrong, when he was initially approached by a flight attendant and told to hike up his pants, said "Don't you have better things to do than worry about that?"

He then tried to take his seat but was asked to leave the plane, Qiu said on the ABC7 website.

The situation appears to have been soon resolved.

"As soon as we became aware of what had happened, we reached out to apologise for this customer's experience," Hawkins said. "He elected to take the next flight."

The Oakland-born Armstrong is the lead singer for the punk band Green Day, which came to fame in the 1990s with songs such as When I Come Around.

A musical called American Idiot based on the band's music is playing on Broadway.