People like models, doctors, hairstylists, and many other airline guests have been singled out or turned away because of the clothes they wear. The first thing that people usually do is post their complaints on social media.
A model and former Miss Universe Olivia Culpo had to cover up her black sports bra and bike shorts with a hoodie before getting on an American Airlines flight to Cabo San Lucas in 2022. That’s what Aurora Culpo did. America got a lot of bad feedback from Aurora, who was traveling with her sister at the time. Additionally, Tisha Rowe, a doctor from Houston, openly criticized the Fort Worth-based airline for asking her to cover up her “too revealing” floral outfit on a trip from Jamaica to Miami in July 2019.
In August 2021, police escorted a passenger wearing black shorts and, at first, a crop top off an Alaska Airlines flight after landing. This episode got a lot of attention. Online, Ray Lin Howard calls herself a hairstylist and rapper and goes by the name Fat Trophy Wife. She shared a video on TikTok of herself being questioned by police after the flight, which she was allowed to stay on. More than 1.5 million people have liked the video, and more than 10,000 people have shared it.
Following an incident on Delta Air Lines in January 2024, a passenger went even further in her anger by hiring famous civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred. For not having a bra on, Lisa Archbold said she was “treated like a criminal” on a flight from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. She says the gate worker helped her get off the plane and wouldn’t let her fly until she put a shirt over her “revealing” outfit.
At a news gathering in late March called “A woman passenger’s breast vs. Delta Air Lines,” Allred and Archbold sat next to a clothing rack with bras hanging from it. Not only that, but Allred also sent a letter to Delta asking the Atlanta-based airline to change its policy and to meet with its president. “Delta’s current policy, which is very subjective, has been applied in a biased way, leading to unfair treatment and harassment of passengers like Ms. Archbold,” Allred wrote.
It’s All About Comfort
People in the US spent a lot on plane tickets before the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978. They also dressed to impress, wearing dresses, three-piece suits, and high heels. These days, comfort is king. Most people in economy class wear jeans, T-shirts, hoodies, flip-flops, and sometimes even jammies. This is because of changing cultural norms and trends like athleisure.
Despite the new trend of dressing less formally, the lack of clarity in airline rules is one reason why fashion issues can arise between passengers and flight attendants. When a person gets a plane ticket, they also agree to follow the contract of carriage. That’s a formal document that spells out the rules for the airline. But some companies don’t really have a dress code. Instead, there are a few lines in the contract of carriage that say what’s not allowed. Many planes don’t let you board with your feet out.
Airlines may also set other rules about how people look. Delta says that a passenger can be kicked off a plane if their “behavior, attire, hygiene, or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers.”
American Airlines just says that people who want to fly must “dress appropriately; bare feet or offensive clothing aren’t allowed.” Spirit Airlines also doesn’t let people board barefoot or in clothes that are “lewd, obscene, or offensive in nature.”
CNN Travel looked at the rules of several US airlines and found that Hawaiian Airlines’ was the most detailed. Hawaiian Airlines has a clear rule about what you can’t wear on board: bare feet, bikini bottoms, and Speedos are not allowed. So is clothing that is “lewd, obscene, or patently offensive to others.” Also, it says that clothes must “cover the upper part of the torso,” but it makes it clear that tank tops, tube tops, halter tops, and shorts (of any length) are okay.
Also, people who are flying on guest or buddy passes given by airline workers may be more closely watched for what they’re wearing, which can also be a surprise. These people are called “non-rev passengers” in the aviation world. For example, in 2017, a United Airlines worker refused to let two teenage girls on a flight because they were wearing leggings. The airline defended this choice on social media, which led to a lot of bad press for the Chicago-based company.
Airline Fashion Issue Focusing On Gender
Most policies are hard to follow because words like “appropriately,” “lewd,” and “offensive” aren’t always clear. This gives flight staff a lot of freedom to decide what will fly. An etiquette expert from Manhattan named Nick Leighton and co-founder of the podcast “Were You Raised by Wolves?” also says that what’s acceptable or proper changes a lot depending on where the airline flies.
“Airlines are free to make their own rules, but what is the cultural norm?” CNN Travel talks to Leighton. “Will it be the Delta headquarters in Atlanta, which is different from, say, Provence or Los Angeles?” Because of these differences, as well as the large cultural and background gaps between flight workers and passengers, some passengers may be more specifically targeted than others.
Women, for instance, make up most of the most well-known cases. There is “a fair amount of body shaming” in many of the stories Mary Jo Manzanares sees in the media. She is a travel writer from Seattle who used to work as a flight attendant for a US airline for 33 years.
“It has to do with skimpy clothes, and especially women,” she says. “To be fair, a man boarding in his Speedo is probably going to get the same reaction.” But there’s no doubt about it: it’s a fashion problem that focuses on men and women.” “I wish it weren’t that way.”
In her message to Delta’s president, Allred also brought up this unfairness, pointing out that the airline’s contract of carriage says it “may not refuse to provide transportation based on… sex.” Delta discriminated against Ms. Archbold because she was a woman by not letting her fly in a T-shirt that would have been fine for a man.
Manzanares says that in all the years she worked as a flight attendant, she was lucky enough to only have a “small handful” of bad hair days. But she also says that a lot of people don’t know how easily things can go wrong in the air because of something as harmless as a slogan on a T-shirt. That’s why staff on the ground and flight workers try to fix any problems before the plane takes off, she says.
Manzanares says, “You have to make it your top priority to solve problems on the ground and make sure there is no violence.” “When you get to 30,000 feet, passengers may start joking or making inappropriate comments to each other. Add a little alcohol, and you may have to make an emergency landing.” That is not what anyone wants.
