homanga

Found this on my twitter feed figured there would be a thread 6 pages long by now. Seems to be a reasonable amount of twitter activity regarding this and @united involved as well


https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/845992819894321153

Surely not going to end well if media coverage picks up significantly on this. Could have played it as rogue gate agent but now with twitter handle defending etc makes it much harder to restep.

cliff notes
Gate agent at DEN requiring women wearing leggings to change/cover up or not board aircraft. People tweet at united regarding this. @united defends gate agent quoting COC rules.


triple edit just saw below tweets hours after initial story. Still a little crazy but less of a story for sure

PTravel

This comment from United semi-explains it (though it still seems silly):

"Please know these passengers were pass riders: United employees or eligible dependents standing by o..."

NH_Clark

I seem to recollect that NRSA's have a dress code. Seems to be another "oh the humanity" tweet with some ill-perceived bias

FlyfromDenver

Buy a ticket and wear what you want. It seems reasonable to me that United can set the rules for people riding on buddy passes or nonrev. This is not new.

WineCountryUA

If pass riders {failing to follow required pass rider dress code} and then taking to social media to criticize UA, their pass riding days are probably finished.

Lubey

I don't think it was the pass rider that criticized it, I think it was just a bystander

mherdeg

It's gonna be tough to figure out who to "blame" here, and the Star-Tribune is probably not going to understand this process, but assuming the UA spokesman is correct that pax were flying on an industry-discount pass or employee pass, whoever arranged that travel for them should really also have apprised them of a dress code.

It's obviously not these two teenagers' fault that they chose to wear yoga pants on a particular day -- that's a totally normal thing to do -- but the person who arranged their pass travel should have told them "by the way, in order to be allowed to fly NRSA, you'll need to meet a few criteria. One of them is this dress-code requirement. I suggest you always bring a dress-code compliant set of clothing when flying NRSA."

Which everyone who does this often certainly does.

http://www.flyzed.info/UA is a crystal clear if possible out of date/third party explanation of the rules NRSA pax agree to follow:
I'm virtually certain that 0% of the mainstream press will get this right.

I think it's not particularly a gender discrimination thing (men can and do wear form-fitting leggings and would also have been turned away based on the airline's unisex dress code for NRSA travel).

Also pretty sure that 0% of the press will ask why and whether NRSA dress code rules exist. I think it's an arcane holdover, like the electronic-devices-after-takeoff situation which mysteriously became safe overnight. Like a throwback to a time when people actually looked at one another in public instead of staring intently at the nearest LCD screen for hours. Back when people might have noticed that pax around them were airline employees or traveling on buddy passes (this is often hard to discern, but sometimes crew will recognize NRSA travelers and chat w/ them or give them free drinks) and might have even noticed the attire of those NRSA travelers and might have even cared (who?!).

Meanwhile those in the know will smile grimly at one another and knowingly say "remember back when DL and UA began to allow jeans in 2010-2011? That made things a lot easier for us, huh?".

Kacee

A little hard to sort out the real facts here, but apparently the GA forced a 10 year old girl to change her clothes. If so, that does sound unnecessary and out of line.

Yes, regardless whether the GA acted appropriately, if the pass holder is the one who tweeted, very very bad idea.

mahasamatman

Only if she was a revenue passenger. If she was traveling on a pass, I don't agree.

halls120

Same here. My brother flies for DL, and he tells me that they are just as strict about how employees and their families must dress when flying on a pass.

WIRunner

The replies on Twitter are idiotic. United simply should not have responded to what was going on.

eisejm

Made the homepage of people http://people.com/human-interest/soc...ngs-on-flight/

riphamilton

337 replies to the tweet, and that number is growing exponentially. I refreshed after writing my first sentence here and it's now up to 345. This has exploded.

The replies are asinine for the most part, but this is a textbook example of corporate social media taking the wrong approach and having it blow up in their face. This could easily become the next "UA breaks guitars."

383 now.

mahasamatman

That's far from exponential growth (or at least very slow growth)...

Bohemian1

"UA breaks Lululemon" perhaps?