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Delta Airlines has apologised to a passenger who complained that staff discriminated against her for dressing like a man.
Kiwi expat Lisa Archbold says that she was threatened with being kicked off her flight from Utah to San Francisco on January 22 after an employee took exception to her dress.
Archbold alleged that this was because she had been wearing men’s clothes and her decision not to wear a bra.
More confronting still was that the issue was not raised at the gate. Having already boarded the plane, the passenger was escorted out of her seat by the Delta crew.
“I was dressed like a little boy in baggy pants and shirt. I had no idea what she was talking about,” she said, sharing a photo of her outfit worn to travel.
“She essentially weaponised Delta’s policy to humiliate and abuse a woman she didn’t think was being a woman in the right way.”
Archbold eventually complied with the request to “cover up”, putting on a jacket to reboard the flight from Salt Lake City.
However, she submitted a complaint that she was dressed modestly and the incident was an example of discrimination against her choice to wear men’s clothes.
The airline’s contract of carriage reserves the right to refuse travel when “the passenger’s conduct, attire, hygiene or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers”.
“I’ve been very specific that what I seek isn’t miles but a change in policy,” said Archbold.
She called for “a reasonable, specific policy that has checks and balances”, rather than one that gave crew power to eject passengers because they were deemed to be an “annoyance”.
The airline has since contacted the passenger to “sincerely apologise for this experience,” but could not be clear on the intent of the crew member who took exception to her attire.
”While we cannot conclude there was any discriminatory intent, we have reported this to our employee’s leadership, and I assure you this will be handled internally, and the appropriate action taken,” they said.
A spokesperson for Delta told the Herald it was airline policy not to comment on individual passengers but they had been in correspondence with Archbold.
“The contract of carriage is up to date and functioning. If there is a need, it will be amended. That said, it’s important to get compliance from every customer for every flight to ensure safe, clean, [on] time flights.”
Dress codes on planes
As the arbiters for the airline at 35,000ft air stewards are the thin blue line, responsible for everything from passenger safety to seating plans.
Among the many duties of cabin crew is interpreting airline policies. For matters such as dress code, this can be extremely woolly.
In an effort to apply to as broad a range of passengers and situations as possible, many international carriers have adopted the “no dress code” dress code.
Carriers like Air New Zealand have clauses covering passenger attire in their contract of carriage, but beyond the requirement that dress be “clean and tidy” it is highly subjective, requiring crew to pass judgment.
Every so often this leads to a “misunderstanding” such as a 2021 incident where a passenger returning from the Cook Islands was told they were exposing “too much skin”.
On the far end of the spectrum, some airlines are extremely uptight on the particulars of their dress code. In 2019 United Airlines was put to task for not allowing two 10-year-old girls to board a flight out of Denver for wearing yoga leggings.
Their family’s complaint that the situation came from the lack of details in United’s dress code led to the airline zipping up on specifics. Among the banned wardrobe malfunctions are no exposed midriffs, no attire that reveals undergarments, shorts should finish no higher than three inches above the knee, bare feet or form-fitting leggings, tops and dresses.
Then there are the oddly specific banned items of attire that surely there must be a story behind.
Like the fact that, for some reason, Ugg Boots are one of the four items of dress banned from Qantas business class lounges. As are jandals, board shorts and vest-tees.
Woe betide any Aussie travellers who rediscover their early-2000s leisure wear.
You can see the appeal of airlines gravitating towards loosely defined, no-code dress codes.
After all, attire guidelines are designed to make flying as pleasant, or inoffensive as possible. Not as a trap for passengers who wear the wrong thing.
