After Barring Girls for Leggings, United Airlines Defends Decision

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United Airlines barred two women from boarding a flight on 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 criticizing what they called an intrusive, sexist policy, but the airline maintained its support for the gate agent’s decision.
The two women, who were about to board a flight to Minneapolis, were turned away at the gate at Denver International Airport. United doubled down on that position, defending the decision 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 telephone interview from Mexico on Sunday afternoon, Ms. Watts said she noticed two visibly upset teenage girls leaving the gate next to hers. Both were wearing leggings.
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Ms. Watts went over to the neighboring 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.”
Ms. 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.
Ms. Watts judged that the two women who were barred from boarding were in their “young teens” and the girl who changed into a dress was 10 or 11.
Ms. 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.
United’s public relations team did not respond to a phone call and an email seeking comment on Sunday, but the company seemed to confirm Ms. Watts’s account in a response to her on Twitter, which 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.
“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.
© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images United Airlines planes at San Francisco International Airport in 2015. Furthermore, the company said the young women it turned away on Sunday were “pass travelers” — United employees or their dependents who fly standby “on a space available basis,” it explained. It described the arrangement as a “company benefit.”
“There is a dress code for pass travelers as they are representing UA when they fly,” the company tweeted. It added, “Casual attire is allowed as long as it looks neat and is in good taste for the local environment.”
Few critics appeared to be satisfied by that explanation, which also did little to de-escalate a perilous public relations situation for the company. United was the target of scores of angry and mocking tweets on Sunday, including from social media savvy celebrities like the model Chrissy Teigen and the actor LeVar Burton.
By Sunday afternoon, the company’s Twitter account was engaged in a tense back-and-forth with the Academy Award winning actress Patricia Arquette, who posted dozens of angry tweets about the situation.
Employees running United’s Twitter account spent the day walking a public relations tightrope: explaining to angry social media users why the company was not wrong to bar the young women from boarding, while reassuring potential customers that they would not also be barred if they showed up in leggings.
People like to be comfortable when they fly, Ms. Watts said, and leggings and yoga pants have become pretty standard casual attire for women.
“I’m pretty sure yoga pants are a thing,” Ms. Watts said. “They’re part of modern America. They’re a staple, a go-to clothing item.”

The New York Times

By LIAM STACK 11 hrs ago