Washington: United Airlines barred two teenage girls from boarding a flight Sunday morning and required a child to change into a dress after a gate agent decided the leggings they were wearing were inappropriate.
That set off waves of anger on social media, with users criticising what they called an intrusive, sexist policy, but the airline maintained its support for the gate agent’s decision.
The girls, who were about to board a flight to Minneapolis, were turned away at the gate at Denver International Airport, the company said Sunday. United doubled down on that decision, defending it in a series of tweets on Sunday.
The incident was first reported on Twitter by Shannon Watts, a passenger at the airport who was waiting to board a flight to Mexico. In a phone interview from Mexico Sunday afternoon, Watts said she noticed two visibly upset teenage girls leaving the gate next to hers. Both were wearing leggings.
Watts went over to the neighbouring gate and saw a “frantic” family with two young girls, one of whom was also wearing leggings, engaged in a tense exchange with a gate agent who told them, “I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”
Watts said the girl’s mother told her the two teenagers had just been turned away because the gate agent said their pants were not appropriate travel attire. The woman had a dress in her carry-on bag that the child was able to pull on over her pants, and the family boarded the flight.
“The girl pulled a dress on,” Watts said. “But please keep in mind that the dad had on shorts that did not hit his knee — they stopped maybe 2 or 3 inches above his knee — and there was no issue with that.”
Watts judged that the two girls who were barred from boarding were in their “young teens” and the girl who changed into a dress was 10 or 11.
Watts described the situation in a series of tweets before her flight to Mexico took off. By the time she landed her tweets had been shared widely, often accompanied by sharp criticism directed at the airline.
Jonathan Guerin, a spokesman for United, confirmed that two teenage girls were told they could not board a flight from Denver to Minneapolis because their leggings violated the company’s dress code policy for “pass travellers,” a company benefit that allows United employees and their dependents to travel for free on a standby basis.
Guerin said pass travellers are “representing” the company and as such are not allowed to wear Lycra and spandex leggings, tattered or ripped jeans, midriff shirts, flip-flops or any article of clothing that shows their undergarments.
“It’s not that we want our standby travellers to come in wearing a suit and tie or that sort of thing,” he said. “We want people to be comfortable when they travel as long as it’s neat and in good taste for that environment.”
He said both teenage girls stayed behind in Denver, “made an adjustment” to their outfits and waited for the next flight to Minneapolis. Guerin did not know if they had successfully boarded or not, and also had no information about the girl Watts said she saw change into a dress at the gate.
The company largely confirmed Watts’ account earlier in the day in a response to her on Twitter that did little to mollify the concerns of its critics.
In a series of dozens of tweets, the company said the incident was not simply the result of an overzealous gate agent. Instead, it said United Airlines reserved the right to deny service to anyone its employees deemed to be inappropriately dressed. It also referred to the dress code applied to pass travellers.
“In our Contract of Carriage, Rule 21, we do have the right to refuse transport for passengers who are barefoot or not properly clothed,” the company tweeted. It added, “There is a dress code for pass travellers as they are representing UA when they fly.”
