All aboard Sexist Airlines! Fury over children’s badges
GIRLS are told they can be what they want when they grow up, but it seems the sky’s the limit for one airline.
When cabin crew handed out stickers to children boarding a TUI Airways flight to the Turkish resort of Antalya, they caused a storm after giving badges saying ‘Future TUI Captain’ to boys and ‘Future TUI Cabin Crew’ to girls.
The gesture backfired when stunned passengers accused the airline of gender stereotyping. Among them was the head of Scottish Athletics, Mark Munro, who said he was ‘appalled’ by the holiday firm’s ‘deeply sexist’ behaviour.
He was even more astounded to learn that the company had been forced to apologise after handing out the same stickers along gender lines on a previous TUI flight last summer, blaming the incident on a ‘mix-up’.
Mr Munro, 1, said: ‘It was only towards the end of the flight that the cabin crew came round giving out stickers to all the kids. We were in a group of 21 friends, including 11 children, and we thought this was fantastic until a lady member of the cabin crew spoke to the son and daughter of my best friend.
‘She told them, “You two have got them on the wrong way round. She’s supposed to have the cabin crew one and he’s supposed to have the pilot one”.
‘Then we looked round and realised that all the boys on the plane had been given pilot stickers and all the girls had been given cabin crew ones. I just could not believe it – in this day and age.’
A TUI UK spokesman apologised ‘to any customer upset at the sticker their child received on their flight to Turkey’.
He added TUI would ‘be working with our crew to ensure children have a choice of which sticker they receive’.