Yesterday, the Internet was abuzz about a situation involving 2 pre-teen girls in a family flying from Denver to Minneapolis who were denied boarding for wearing leggings. Blog-wise, I saw coverage from Live and Let’s Fly, One Mile at a Time, View from the Wing, Point me to the Plane, and others.
United’s non-rev dress code
It turns out that these passengers were what’s called “non-rev” travelers, which means that they were likely either family of airline employees or friends on a “buddy pass”.
So if you want to wear leggings on a United or any other airline flight, you absolutely can…. if you pay for your ticket. When United is letting you fly for free, you agree to a stricter set of rules.
Learning from the Pirates of the Caribbean
I was reminded of a scene from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean (the first movie aka the only good one)
CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow informs Will Turner that there are only 2 things that matter: what a man CAN do and what a man CAN’T do. In United’s situation, there’s the matter of what United CAN do and what UNITED CAN’T do
What United CAN do
I think that United was well within their rights as well as their policies to deny boarding, based on their non-rev code of conduct. My wife and I flew non-rev on buddy passes once (never again!) back in 1999 and our friend, who was a Delta flight attendant, made it very clear to us that there was a dress code. I remember us wearing business casual (but it’s been nearly 20 years so the details are a bit hazy…). As The Unaccompanied Flier (a frequent non-rev traveler) put it, when you fly on a buddy pass or similar, you are acting (in a way) as a representative of the company.
Personally I think dress codes in 95% of life situations are outdated, so a good look at their policy is probably in order as well. One Mile at a Time wonders if their policy is somewhat sexist, since it focuses specifically on clothing worn by women.
What United CAN’T do
What United CAN’T do, is ignore the repercussions of perception. As we found out, nobody else in the terminal can tell who is or is not flying on a buddy pass and most people don’t really care either. As I put it in the title of this post
You’re not going to get far in life by being a jerk to 10 year old girls
Perhaps this would be a situation where some compassion on the gate agent’s part would have gone a long way. I have my own opinions about whether leggings / yoga pants are appropriate public apparel, but that ship sailed a long time ago.
I’d also support discipline against the employee who gave out the buddy passes. It is his or her responsibility to share the rules of buddy pass travel. And while they eventually came out with an appropriate response / press release, their initial response on Twitter was not very compassionate.
Readers – what about you? What are your thoughts on the situation? What SHOULD United have done?
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Bottom line: even if United is technically correct, in the grand scheme of things, they are wrong. And if it takes them this long to figure out why, they need to hire new people. Those who are defending United because the leggings techincally violated the rules are also missing the big picture here. It’s like all the grown ups have left the room, and the kids are fighting over who had the toy first.
Right. Like I said in the title, you’re not going to get far in life as an adult (or multi-billion dollar corporation) by being a jerk to 10 year old girls
If you fly for free United can have rules about what you wear. If you don’t like then pay for a ticket. Also, it doesn’t seem like anyone was being a jerk and it seems like the only person who had a problem was the lady at the gate who started all the tweeting. The flyers violated the dress code, the gate agent called them out on it, the flyers fixed the dress code issue and flew. Why are people getting so worked up?
that’s exactly what’s wrong with society – the 10-year old decided to be a parasitic free-loading jerk herself, and Twitter comes to her defense instead because it’s hip and cool to defend her instead of a company following their own dress-code policy for non-revs. (PWaC: Edited for language)
How does using someone’s buddy pass make you a “parasitic free-loading jerk”? It’s a perk granted by the airlines to their staff? I think anyone with friends or family in aviation would take advantage of it.
What’s wrong with society is people who feel no shame using vulgar, derogatory language to describe a 10-year old girl!!
That being said, I absolutely think that they should have followed the dress code.
Oh boy. A 10 year old child travelling with her parent is a parasitic free loader? Sounds like United is staffed with people like you right now.
A bit surprised by your reaction. Are form fitting leggings not against your religion? I totally agree with you, though. “What United CAN’T do, is ignore the repercussions of perception.” The damage is done.
I would say that form fitting leggings are not specifically against my religion (Mormon / LDS). I would agree though that in our church, we are taught to dress modestly and that there are many Mormons (myself included) that would probably not wear form fitting leggings in public.
See also https://www.lds.org/topics/modesty?lang=eng&old=true
I have no idea what the actual clothing in question looked like, and I’m not sure why we’re really talking about “form-fitting” clothing as it relates to 10 year olds. Certainly there are many clothing options that many people wear in public that I would not be comfortable having my daughters wear, but I’m not sure how that’s any of my business, at least as it relates to this story.
To put it another way, it is an actual prohibition that Mormons in good standing don’t drink alcohol (as opposed to the more grey area of being modest in dress). Yet I don’t go around shaming people that drink beer.
“You’re not going to get far in life by being a jerk to 10 year old girls” Who was a jerk and how do you know? You weren’t there. It sounds like the problem was the woman who tweeted about a situation that she wasn’t involved in and didn’t understand. Every blogger is making this a bigger issue than it should be.
As an airline employee (while not United), many people get mad because we follow policies, even when we do so politely. And this is one area our companies do not want us to “show compassion”. They expect consistency from us when it concerns pass travel policy. It amazes me that outsiders are getting involved in our company internal policies and suggest that “a good look at their policy is probably in order as well.”
I didn’t want to comment on this ridiculousness but couldn’t take it anymore.
I don’t know all the facts, so I don’t know how the gate agent handled it. I will give him/her the benefit of the doubt – when I talk about “being a jerk” I am mostly talking about United the corporation.
Also, I don’t know what blogs or other reports you’ve read, but I can say that most of the blogs that *I* have read have been pretty fair – basically saying “Yes, United was right in denying boarding, but perhaps this policy is not the best”. As opposed to some of the other news outlets that have been like “OMG United threw 2 10 year olds off a plane and sent them to jail!!!!!!!111ONE”
As for the policy, it would VERY much surprise me if United does not revise this policy as a result of this incident.
As a former frequent non-rev flyer with a different airline, count me 100% behind United with this. Many companies have a dress requirement for employees who interact with the public and I find it totally acceptable that anyone taking advantage of an employee benefit be held to the same standards as an employee. And as a woman I see nothing in the reported dress code that offends me as being sexist. I am sure male 10 year olds in leggings would also have had the same issue. Males might argue that the clause relating to exposed undergarments is targetted at the more commonly male custom of baggy pants that fall below the waistline. As for the initial comment about religion – that kind of ignorance should not be tolerated on this board or anywhere in the US where we are lucky and blessed to have some basic freedoms, though hate speech is Not one of them. Notwithstanding, why would anyone bring up Hindu dress code.
The non-rev dress code is real. Adhere to it or buy a ticket.
That being said- I didn’t understand leggings to be an excluded part of the dress code. I’m also having an extremely difficult time believing that leggings are the whole story here.
I know a lot of gate agents and I can’t see any of them doing this… unless there was something else going on. If I had to guess- I would say there was some disruptive behavior that led to the gate agent selectively enforcing the dress code, and we’re not getting the full details.
Not getting the whole details from a viral news story started by Twitter?!?!? That would be un-imaginable!!! 😀