I guess I am the counter-example of this. I worked many years in a company that didn't allow Bussiness Class for *anyone* (Silicon Valley "frugality").
I traveled with whichever airline had the cheapest Y ticket, therefore was never an elite (not until I started traveling on my own dime).

But I like to dress well, in a style that people would call "European". Many, many times I was in the Econony check-in line or boarding, and I was shown the Business/Elite check-in counters or boarding line. I would reply that I was actually in Y, and sometimes they would insist that I went to the priority lines anyway.
On a CO flight SFO-IAH, I was at galley between Y and F, waiting to go to the restroom. FA comes to me:
FA: First class restrooms are upfront. You can go there.
Me: I know, but I am sitting in Y.
FA: Really? You don't look poor.

I'm 19 and having been flying business/first for about two years now. Some carriers treat me differently (Air France is a good example. But most FAs are French, so that explains a lot :D) some don't. I do get strange looks once in a while from fellow passengers. I couldn't care less, though.

Long sleeves, long trousers, and a sport coat... that's what you wear in Austin, TX? Today, it is supposed to be 94F / 34C.

Plus, dress shoes are not practical for flight itineraries involving connections, since flight delays may require you to run across the airport to make your connection. (If you have to go straight to a business meeting or such, you may have to carry dress shoes to put on at your final destination, or risk being slowed down during the connection.)

O rly?


Clean shirt, new shoes
and I don't know what I am gonna do.
Silk suit, black tie,
I don't need a reason why.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
cause every girl is crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

- ZZ Top

Lupine's husband always dresses casually when flying, except for the time he was wearing a very nice suit, tie,... on the way to a funeral. For the first time ever he was upgraded, and noted that the agents treated him with a great deal more courtesy. They had no idea he was on his way to a funeral; he certainly didn't mention it, and I set up his reservation and made no mention of it. So just one instance, but interesting nonetheless.

I'd agree with the poster who noted that an awful lot of consultants and other very frequent travelers are in their twenties and early thirties. I don't think this is a surprise to most flight crews -- I often found that I got to recognize the FAs because I saw them regularly enough on hops each month they were on that particular schedule.

The only time I've experienced overt age discrimination I posted about it over in the United forum. GA called me up when I cleared the standby list. Handed me my BP. As I walked away she addressed me by my first name to see if i'd respond, requested to hand her back the BP and she proceeded to ask me if I was flying under my mom's FF number b/c there is no way I could be 1P. I was 25 at the time and had been 1P for 2 years. I had already done 77k miles that year since it was Nov or Dec.

I went back to my seat and sent a comment to UA.

Other than that my BPs get a doubletake sometimes during boarding I don't really notice much else. I do wear dress slacks and a dress shirt. I don't wear blazers or skirts.

Why would the airlines discriminate against someone in their 30s? How old do they expect FFs to be? Most of them are in their 30s or 40s and the waning begins in the 50s.

OT or not, your "theses" are speculative, subjective, and not rooted in reality.

And that's really the only important point in this entire thread, and the only one that is uniformly true. All this other discussion about what is and is not appropriate dress is entirely subjective and irrelevant.

What, because you say they are? Doesn't make them any less valid. Opinions, as is often said, are like noses. Everyone has one. Sometimes they smell.

My husband has always looked much younger than he is. He could not purchase a beverage in a bar without being carded until he was 45. He had the same problem purchasing a six pack of beer in the supermarket.

On five separate occasions when he had invasive health procedures done, the surgeon came out of the operating room and told me what things I needed to do when I took "my son" home.

When he went places with our two eldest daughters he was always mistaken as a husband rather than a father.

No one was attempting to insult him, but people were always embarrassed when they discovered his age. In their embarrassment they often said some stupid things.

I really think this is what happened to the OP. The TA misread his customer, and then made some less than generous comments. I really do not see a TA shouting "You are a liar" as the OP tries to check his luggage. If so, I would certainly expect it was a poor attempt at humor or some inappropriate way to observe that the OP looks young for his age.

I realize that everyone should be treated in a respectful fashion, but I also think this is a tempest in a teapot. In the grand scheme of life, having someone think you are too young to have achieved whatever it is you have achieved is not the worst thing that will happen to you.

All of you people who are offended because people do not provide proper respect for your medallion status, your age, and/or your college education should enjoy it while it lasts.

My husband now collects Social Security, but has fond memories of those years when people thought he was 15 years younger than his actual age.

I flew standby on UA last year, and I was wearing a suit, as I traveling to ORD for the day for a business meeting. I suppose the young female GA could have given me any old seat, but she gave me an E+ exit row seat with full recline, the best seat I have ever had in coach. I have wondered if my suit had any impact on scoring that seat.

Topic check
 

Just a reminder that the topic is whether the appearance of one's age affects the travel experience. General discussions of age treatment at the supermarket, in the surgical suite, in academia or otherwise in our society have been deleted from this thread but are welcome to be discussed in our OMNI forum. Ocn Vw 1K, Co-Moderator, TravelBuzz.

On some UA flights, standbys and others without preassigned seats often do get E+ seats, because the flight tends to be light on elites, so the E- seats tend to be full of passengers with preassigned seats while there is empty space in E+. This is especially likely on CRJ-700 planes with "explus" configuration (28 E+, 32 E-, plus a few F).

Back to OP's main topic, I don't think anyone in their right minds would disagree that GA or FAs should not discriminate based on dress. Nor should they comment on economy pax being 'poor' (who's paying YOUR salary?). That is bad service.

Equally we all agree that dressing really badly detracts from other pax's travel experiences. What we mean by dressing 'badly' differs. Some look at clothes, others at cleanliness (I was seated in next to a guy in an expensive-looking suit recently who had such bad BO I kept my head turned towards the aisle most of the way on the short flight! Must have been one heck of a meeting). Since travel is nowadays multicultural and very globalised, 'dressing well' has to be understood with a great degree of flexibility and tolerance.

Conclusion: lighten up everyone, an airplane is not a country club. Dress sensibly. If it's hot, shorts and T-shirts are A-OK. Ditto suits. It doesn't make you more valuable.

Look at Richard Branson: never in a suit, and yet he owns the dang airline! :D

I wonder how much gender is a factor-As a 21yo (and looks younger) male who wears shorts/t-shirt/sandals quite a bit, I havent gotten any comments from either UA staff or pax in my 5F segments this year (3 of them op-ups ^) besides 1 "are you premier" comment when entering the 1P/2P line which is expected

Social age prejudice, come discrimination, over disparity of years in otherwise friendships has now accelerated away to something like current levels of racism x infinity. It is so extreme now as to be "off the scale", and off the scale it tends to be no longer even noticed. It is virtually totally unchecked for reasons of going virtually totally unnoticed. One could write massive books specifically on this one issue, and without exhausting it, but nobody has bothered write more than the very odd paragraph. We are talking prejudice so overwhelming that we are even programmed by it. Whilst it is n`t taken on board, and that`s because it`s larger than our minds can acknowledge, we are subservient to it, and out of it are very obviously prone to aging needlessly early, and needlessly quickly. Whist we should be bragging about how young we are, more especially through our fifties and sixties, we, virtually all of us, even talk ourselves old. Our perception of ourself may be the biggest single factor in determining our youth span.