Airline faces storm after barring girls in leggings
Outraged travellers and celebrities accuse United Airlines of sexism and corporate ham-handedness
United Airlines has run into a social media storm after it barred two teenage girls from boarding a flight in Denver because they were wearing leggings.
Another girl who was also wearing leggings was allowed to board the flight from Denver International Airport to Minneapolis after she changed, a witness said.
United spokesman Jonathan Guerin told the New York Times that the two girls barred from flying “made an adjustment” to their clothing and were waiting for the next flight to Minneapolis. Another airline spokesman said that the girls were travelling under an employee travel pass that includes a dress code.
The incident was reported on Twitter by Shannon Watts — founder of gun reform group Moms Demand Action — who was a passenger at the airport waiting to board another flight to Mexico. “She’s forcing them to change or put dresses on over leggings or they can’t board,” she said. “Since when does @united police women’s clothing?”
“A 10-year-old girl in gray leggings,” she added of one of the girls. “She looked normal and appropriate.”
With that, the charges began to fly across the Twittersphere, with outraged travellers and celebrities weighing in with accusations of sexism and corporate ham-handedness.
“I have flown United before with literally no pants on. Just a top as a dress,” declared model Chrissy Teigen in one tweet. “Next time I will wear only jeans and a scarf.”
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.”
‘Not appropriate’
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.