I used to fly non-rev on American when my Dad was a flight instructor. Dad put the fear of God into me: I value my flight privileges more than I can express to you, so you dress according to the guidelines, you behave impeccably, etc. I was so thrilled to be able to fly non-rev (I didn’t have the discretionary funds at that time to travel at all), those rules didn’t bother me one bit.
It’s pretty simple to follow the guidelines. I think what should have been a minor annoyance has been elevated way out of proportion.
As for being “publicly shamed,” I really doubt it. I also think it’s really stretching it to imply that enforcing a dress code is going to potentially push someone into the abyss of eating disorders.
I’m not buying into the theory that the 10 year old was emotionally damaged by the experience. If this would have occurred to our family when my daughter was 10 I’m confident it would’ve been a non-issue. As parents we would have taken responsibility for the misunderstanding of the rules; DD would have put on the dress and moved on (as the girl in this case apparently did); and we would have done all we could to minimize any disruption.
And to those decrying this as sexist, be careful what you wish for. Who among us wants to see the male equivalent of a camel toe in Walmart, on a plane or, for that matter, anywhere?
What this comes down to is that this is a bad business decision by United.
There appears to be zero benefit to this policy (that seems arbitrary) and there’s clearly a non-zero cost to enforcing it (bad PR). You don’t have to be an accountant to figure out that the policy should probably go–or the airline should live with the fact that it’s married to an unpopular and indefensible policy that is harming its business.
Are you saying that in the year 2017 your accounting firm and other law firms in the cosmopolitan greater Boston area REQUIRES women to wear skirts AND stockings? Seriously? I have never heard of such a thing and work in the most corporate environment you can think of. I, for one, would not take that job. Lucky the government doesn’t have that rule for the most important job in the world (not that it will become an issue anytime soon).
Agree with your comment that no one would know who was on the companion ticket and who was not.
@alwaysamom The general public doesn’t know who is flying on an employee pass, but the rule is that people flying on these passes are supposed to dress to a certain standard because having well-dressed passengers creates a better image for the airline. These people are getting to travel for free or almost free, and the least they can do is follow the rules.
(Even those of you who don’t think this has caused any cost to United–and I think you’re wrong–it seems more than likely that if this policy continues to be enforced this way it will eventually come up again, and again, and at some point, companies have an interest in avoiding this kind of bad PR. So the question remains: What is the benefit of enforcing such an arbitrary and indefensible policy? Whether United has a right to enforce the policy is beside the point; it’s a business question, and bad PR is bad for business.)
Honestly - a 10-year-old child! Are those cute little striped Hannah Anderson tights off limits?
And do they think they’re enlightened because they allow shorts? Only old man shorts and basketball shorts come within 2-3" of your knees. I wonder if they got out the tape measure to check if the Dad’s shorts would pass. Of course not, they only do that to young people and females.
And the larger question is this: what the heck was the Dad doing wearing shorts on a flight from Denver to Minneapolis in March? His clothes would raise the biggest flag to me for being inappropriate.
Thus far I haven’t seen any United defense of the policy other than saying it’s within the company’s right. Well, this vague rule–about safety!–leaves me to wonder by what reasoning could a child’s leggings be considered unsafe?
If you have evidence of “strenuous and repeated responses”, Marvin, please provide it. The first tweet from them was, IMO, premature, as it did reference the contract of carriage issue, which is not the issue. When they confirmed the family was nonrev, they responded with that. IMO they should have waited til they had that information but someone assigned to respond to tweets may have responded prematurely. So where is this “strenuous and repeated response”? Over here on this side of the pond, it seems to have quickly dropped to page 6 as they say. Buried as old news.
Whether or not something eventually, maybe will come up in the future is not relevant to the current policy enforcement. IMO the one with egg on their face is not United.
Also hilarious–United once tweeted an ad that encouraged its passengers to wear yoga pants. I can’t post it because Twitter links aren’t allowed, but it’s a photo of a woman in a yoga pose at an airport terminal with the caption “If your yoga routine’s feeling routine, find new places to say Ommm. #internationalyogaday”
Doesn’t matter. The 10 year old girl or the celebs and others who angrily tweeted at United don’t have to worry about their PR, unlike United, a company that’s spent most of the last few decades on the brink of bankruptcy and has only survived due to enormous (think billions) government bailouts. Public companies have to be concerned with their public image, and if they didn’t care, they wouldn’t have PR teams.
Oh for the love of pete. So on international Yoga day (who knew there was such a thing) United tweets a pic of some girl in a yoga pose in an airport. And that is your evidence that they “encouraged its passengers to wear yoga pants?” Thats pretty funny. Besides, even if by some stretch of the imagination someone did think that tweet was somehow perceived as “encouraging” passengers to wear yoga pants, well, they can. All paying passengers who arent flying on a buddy pass or nonrev. Its really not that complicated.
So, @jym626 , if passengers can wear yoga pants and the company clearly doesn’t consider them inappropriate travel attire, where’s the safety issue that necessitates the no-leggings policy?
The policy enforced yesterday was for a non rev passenger, The dress code applies to them. The dress code has been posted several times. You dont have to like it.
The dress code, though, is explicitly under the “Safety” heading in the non rev contract. So what’s the safety issue? Why is it a rule? Why would a company stubbornly stick to a rule it can’t defend and that is clearly unpopular with a segment of its customer base? Why would a company single out a 10-year-old child?
(And just to be clear: United absolutely has not made its non-rev dress code public. The dress code linked here and elsewhere is from a third party site and United has not confirmed that it’s accurate and we have no way of knowing if it is. And if it is, it clearly states that the customer service gate agent has decision-making leeway and it’s a specification of the rule in the Contract under safety).
