Ellen Simonetti

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Ellen Simonetti (b. December 15, 1974, North Carolina) is a former flight attendant who was fired after documenting her life and work experiences on a blog in the early 2000s. Although Simonetti never mentioned the airline by name, her employer Delta Air Lines, deeming some of the blog content inappropriate, suspended and then fired her.

In fall 2004, Ellen Simonetti was fired for what was deemed by her employer to be inappropriate material on her blog. She subsequently wrote a book based on her blog.

1 Biography
2 Blog and dismissal
3 Employers and bloggers
4 Aftermath
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Biography

Ellen Simonetti, one of three siblings, was raised in Durham and Raleigh, North Carolina. She spent a year in Bern, Switzerland as a high school exchange student, later dropping out of high school to become first a travel agent and then a flight attendant. She was first employed in the flight industry in 1996 with a charter airline based in Miami, Florida.

After the charter went out of business, Simonetti was hired by Delta Air Lines. During her eight years with Delta, she flew German, Spanish, and Italian routes with the airline and completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish at the University of Texas at Austin.

[edit] Blog and dismissal

Ellen Simonetti began her "Queen of Sky: Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant" blog in September 2003 as a form of therapy after the loss of her mother to cancer.^[1] In addition to describing events of her life, Simonetti also described travel abroad, mainly Europe and South America, while working for Delta Air Lines. Simonetti adopted the nom de plume, "Queen of Sky" for her blog. With practical information on world-wide travel described in a quirky, irreverent tone, the blog developed a considerable following.

In late 2004, Simonetti was suspended^[2] and then fired^[3] after Delta Air Lines objected to Ellen posing for photographs on a company airplane and commentary on her blog.^[4] Simonetti subsequently renamed her blog "Diary of a Fired Flight Attendant."

[edit] Employers and bloggers

These events became emblematic of the issue of employees' rights to communicate their own views of their work and workplace versus employers' rights to restrict them. There was considerable media coverage of Simonetti's firing and the freedom of expression issues involved.^[2] ^[3] ^[5] ^[6]

Simonetti advocates:

that employers should have clear, unambiguous blogging policies, so that employees can foresee the potential for disciplinary action, and
that the penalty for a first offense should be a formal warning rather than dismissal.

Other individuals who have been fired for content in their personal blogs include Heather Armstrong, Jessica Cutler, Catherine Sanderson,^[7] and Jan Pronk, United Nations Special Representative for Sudan, who was given three days notice to leave Sudan after the Sudanese army demanded his deportation for comments in his weblog.^[8] ^[9]

[edit] Aftermath

In 2005, Simonetti filed a lawsuit (currently pending) against Delta, alleging sex discrimination and retaliation, among other things.^[5] In a general discussion of a code of conduct for blogging, the law.com site stated her suit was dismissed without prejudice by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on October 28, 2005.^[10] Simonetti, however, providing a link to a court docket on her blog, said that as of February 2007 her suit against Delta Airlines has not been dismissed but is delayed while Delta is in bankruptcy proceedings.^[11]

Simonetti has discussed personal blogging rights on The Montel Williams Show ^[12]and the Larry Elder show.^[13] She set up a Bloggers Rights petition^[14] and was a member of the short-lived Committee to Protect Bloggers.^[15]

Simonetti has written articles for the news media including The New York Times^[16] and CNET,^[17] adapted her blog to a published book,^[18] and has worked in real estate.^[19]

On her website she says that although she has kept her real estate licence, she is not using this and has "...gone back to school at the University of Texas (undergrad), where I'm currently a journalism major, but soon to be an RTF (radio/TV/film) major".