United Airlines have been heavily criticised on social media after denying two girls from boarding for wearing leggings.
On Sunday, United Airlines defended a gate agent’s decision to bar two young girls from boarding a flight because they were wearing leggings. The decision attracted a wave of anger on social media, with users calling to boycott the airline.
Critics of the policy, call it sexist and intrusive.
United Airlines were keen to stress that the two girls were not typical passengers. They were “pass riders” – a term used for United employees or their eligible dependants standing by on a space-available basis.
The incident was first reported by Shannon Watts on Twitter, who witnessed the incident at the airport. She said she noticed two visibly upset girls wearing leggings leaving the gate next to hers.
The girls, one of them aged 10, were told to change their clothes or wear dresses over the leggings. Watts claims that this type of policy ““sexualizes young girls.”
What Ms Watts found most disappointing was that their father, who was wearing shorts which stopped “two or three inches above the knee”, was not called out by the gate agent.
The United employee said: “I don’t make the rules. I just enforce them.”
Heather Poole, an author and flight attendant for a different airline, defended the airline’s policy on Twitter, stating that dress codes for staff travelling on a free pass are common practice in the industry.
United Airlines released the following statement in the hope to clear up the confusion:
Like most companies, we have a dress code that we ask employees and pass riders to follow. The passengers this morning were United pass riders and not in compliance with our dress code for company benefit travel. To our regular customers, your leggings are welcome.
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