On Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke live from Newark International Airport on enhancing the air travel experience. But his concern wasn’t flight delays, increasing costs, or a rise in air accidents; it was the passenger dress code.
As a part of his new “civility” campaign, Duffy requested that travelers ditch the pajama and slipper outfits at airports. His logic? Bring back fancy dressing so people stop behaving rowdy and act chivalrous instead. “I call this just dressing with some respect,” he said. “I would encourage people to dress a little better, which encourages us to behave a little better.”
The secretary suggested wearing a pair of jeans and a decent T-shirt instead. He also urged passengers to “say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to our pilots and flight attendants.” These instructions come as one of the busiest times of air travel is approaching due to the holiday season. It’s a part of a new civility campaign launched last Wednesday, titled “The Golden Age of Travel Starts With You.”
Sean Duffy launches a civility campaign
The campaign urges people to go back to “an era where we didn’t wear our pajamas to the airport.” In the campaign video, the Department of Transportation romanticized the time when passengers “respected the dignity of air travel.” It then featured some bizarre videos out of airplanes and airports, showing people behaving wildly. And then Duffy appears, asking passengers to ‘bring civility and manners back’:
Ask yourself, are you helping a pregnant woman put her bag in the overhead bin? Are you dressing with respect? Are you keeping control of your children? Are you saying thank you to your flight attendants and your pilots? Are you saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in general?
Then, on Monday, he repeated his words. But, people believe he’s “putting the onus on passengers to create a more pleasant air travel experience.”
What is the Transportation Department doing to enhance air travel?
When a reporter asked what the department is doing on their end to help enhance the experience, he said,
“I mean, you’re asking, can everyone do a better job? Can T.S.A. do a better job? Can we do a better job as we bring more air traffic controllers online? Can we get a brand new air traffic control system up and working so we have less delays and less cancellations? Yes.”
But he soon turned those 10 seconds of accountability back to the passengers. “In the end,” Duffy suggests, it’s a passenger’s responsibility to behave well. You can’t “offload” that to anybody else, he said. Although he clarified that he’s not trying to blame anybody and wants everyone to do better, he failed to reveal what he is doing to improve.
The Trump administration is killing policies that protected air travelers
The Transportation Department recently withdrew a proposal that would have required airlines to pay passengers up to $775 in cash for significant travel disruptions. The proposal also guaranteed meals, lodging, some ground transportation, and other necessities for travelers delayed three hours or more. Biden championed these policies, but Trump isn’t happy with them. (via NY Times)
So, on one hand, the department is erasing policies that protected the rights of airline passengers. And at the same time, Duffy is pushing the responsibility of making air travel better onto the passengers’ shoulders.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
