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We like to talk about how much we hate airline travel. I’ll admit with several hundred thousand airline miles under my belt, I’m an expert. In fact, I’m writing this in the Denver airport, my 5th connection through Denver this month, and just got a three-hour delay. Yup, I’m an expert.
Much of airline travel is miserable, yes. The entire TSA experience. The lines. Lines for the bathroom. Lines to get a cup of coffee. Lines to get on the escalator to get on a train to get in a line to go up the escalator to get in a line at the gate to get in a line in the jet bridge. It’s Soviet.
But what we really hate about the airport and the airlines… what really drives us over the edge… are other people. And people are fixable. The rest is not.
Sorry. I really don’t think the TSA or the Airlines / Airports will improve. TSA? Unless we deport Islam and profile people for no-fly lists, TSA will never reform. You think any U.S. President is going to risk another terrorist incident for the sake of improved personal experience and greater individual freedom? It’s laughable.
I like Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and was a regular on his FOX Business show before he was nominated to the position. He’s a good guy. “One of us.” There is no way in hell Duffy is going to risk Mohammed Shabaz Bin Jamar using a flight to secure paradise with 49 virgins and endless falafel by letting TSA be more respectful of human dignity. If anything, his duty is to make it more stringent.
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I am the perfect candidate for proper TSA “reform”. I have a very public profile, several decades of tax receipts, zero criminal record, TSA pre-check, CLEAR, Global Entry, and an inactive TS/SCI Full Scope/POLY security clearance (the highest you can get), plus registration on numerous federal (and unconstitutional) gun logs… in a functioning TSA I should be allowed to just walk on a plane. I’m not a threat. The government knows I’m not a threat, but we pretend.
“Anyone can be a Muslim terrorist!” Just like we did with the AIDS scare. “Anyone can get it!” Eh, my dad wasn’t too worried…
So, I wait in the TSA line, with my CLEAR, my pre-check, my pre-check touchless (which I don’t really understand but it is now the shortest line) and I play the security assessment game. My better half and I were going through Dulles Airport TSA headed to the UK this past summer, and in front of us was a fully covered, just the eyeballs showing person (Man? Woman? Who the hell knows?) and it went through TSA no problem. When I walked through: BEEP! BEEP! “Sir, could you step aside you’ve been randomly selected for additional screening” and I’m given the TSA officer love grope.
Statistically, who’s more likely a threat to the plane? But statistics don’t drive our national security. What does? I don’t know. No one does. Diversity? Tolerance? Not being called offensive… but none of it makes us safe.
Just imagine asking Artificial Intelligence to run a program on TSA screening. The fastest way to end AI is to have it do unbiased crime stats. It would be run out of town like David Duke in a pickup truck.
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TSA will never change and nor will the airlines. They enjoy one of the best monopolies in business. What forces any industry to improve is competition, and the airlines are eliminating it regularly. I liked USAir. I thought they were the best airline. Easier for American Airlines to buy USAir them than to beat them, and after that merger, the need for American Airlines to improve vanished.
I once flew Virgin America from Dulles to LAX. It was probably one the best coach experiences imaginable in terms of food, comfort, entertainment. One would think it was going to set a new standard in air travel, and it was… until Alaska Airlines bought it, and all of that improved customer experience was eliminated.
Niceties cost money.
No Venture Capitalists are vision-boarding a new airline. There’s no airport space, too much government bureaucracy, too much risk and not enough reward. We’re stuck. Airlines know we are stuck. Their mottos should be more honest.
United Airlines: If you don’t like us, then walk to Paris, fatso
Delta: You hate us, but we hate you even more
American Airlines: You want us to put you on the no-fly list? Then shut the hell up
Our only option to improve air travel is for people to improve, and that is possible, but it will require a lot of uncomfortable work. Better behaved, better attired, better composed people are possible with discipline, shame, exclusion, and punishment. We can fix air travel if we fix ourselves.
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Let me start with the men. I’ll let a lady talk to the ladies. I believe in two genders, as God created, and I’ll give advice to my own and encourage ladies to police each other. Especially on the ubiquity of the yoga pants, which roughly only 5% of them should be wearing in yoga studios and 0% at the airport. I will stick to the men and not tell women to stop using arguing with the gate agent who asks them to consolidate a roller bag, purse, tote, backpack and fifth random bag while unable to pull up the boarding pass holding a ginormous coffee cup because she’s on a call. No, I’ll let women talk to women about that.
Men, I will be clear and blunt. We have a job to do. We are men. We do our duty for the good of society without complaint. Here is what you are going to do to improve the airport experience. Do it. Time for us to set the public example and lead because we are men.
Let’s start with attire. “Dress for the job you want” needs to apply to personal airport appearance. Comfort is for children (and apparently all the yoga pants women).
No toes or armpits should ever be visible.
The number of times I’ve seen a man wearing a mask but standing at an airport urinal in flip flops… here’s a good rule: flip flips should be worn to and from water. Wear them to the pool and the beach. Wear them tubing down the river. Wear them after your gym workout to avoid athlete’s foot or George Costanza’s urination in the shower.
(There’s a second Seinfeld reference coming shortly.)
Men don’t wear shorts on a plane unless sitting next to their spouse or in a singular row like the United flights on a Bombardier CRJ-550. Men do not press their thigh skin against strangers. “But it’s summer”. The airplane is 65 degrees. You’re fine. In fact, you’re better than fine: you’re a man. Dress like one.
As bad as shorts are sweatpants. Too many have fallen for the Instagram ad of the handsome, former D-1 athlete saying “these are my new go-to travel sweatpants”. He looks great. He is also 6’3’’ a 4% body fat and a professional model. Buddy, you’re… not. You should not be wearing sweatpants in public.
“Again with the sweatpants?”, Jerry Seinfeld asked a slovenly George Costanza. “You know the message you are sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You’re telling the world: I give up. I can’t compete in normal society. I’m miserable, so I might as well be comfortable”.
Men wearing sweatpants in public are admitting they are failures. Dress like you are not George Costanza.
When 16 of us went to Scotland for my buddy’s bachelor party, he insisted we all wear jacket and tie on the plane “like old times”. Never in history have 16 guys drunk so much and yet made such little noise on an overnight flight. Was it our attire? It definitely contributed. We didn’t dress like drunken fools. We dressed like men (who got very drunk like fools).
Wear a collar.
That’s a simple rule for airport travel (and all public life as men). Wear a collar. It can be a flannel. It can be a Brooks Brothers oxford. A polo shirt. A plaid, western with snaps. But clothes make the man, and collars make the clothes.
Tee shirts are for work. I wear a tee shirt every day on the farm. I don’t wear them to a friend’s house for dinner. I don’t wear them to a restaurant. And there’s no such thing as a “nice” tee shirt. My $15 Costco polo is nicer than your $150 Theory tee shirt. Always.
Then, as men, we must demand those around us act the same. Shame is valuable. Trust me, your friend who shows up to the airport dressed like he’s the 6th man on an NBA team will stop dressing like that if you call him out. Basketball shorts and an Allen Iverson jersey? What are you, 14?
Men dressed appropriately are less likely to sprawl out on the floor or lay down across 4 seats at the gate. Men dressed appropriately are less likely to put their feet up like they are in the privacy of their den. And more importantly, men who behave well create a climate of good behavior and dignified composure. One is less likely to have an airport meltdown, the violent and verbal kind which makes the news, when those around them are well-behaved.
Why are you quiet at the library? Because everyone else is. We can do the same at the airport. We just have to be the first ones.
I’ve never seen an appropriately dressed man disturb others with his FaceTime calls. I’ve never seen a guy in a collared shirt watch a video without headphones. I’ve never seen someone who dresses the part stand at the podium and yell about his seat. The properly dressed tend to be the properly behaved, and the properly behaved make air travel tolerable.
The same goes with dining. Concerts. Movies. Performing arts. I’ll exempt ball games as most of us wear a Jeeter #2 jersey (you should, regardless of the team or the sport) and raucous behavior is part of the fan experience. It is not part of the flight experience. Dress the part. Dress for success. Dress for job you want, and the job we all want, which will get us a private jet where we can dress however we want. Until then, dress like a man. Then more of us will act like one.
Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. He also runs a sheep and cattle farm in rural Virginia. Contact him at daniel@powerthefuture.com and follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF
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Mr. Turner, I’m 100% down for your suggestion. My favorite saying to my spouse at the airport when Mark, the wannabee basketball player or Quashanda, the ‘Where were you raised? - KMART?’ Shopper, a, er, I meant the 1.5” or longer nails passenger walk by is, “TMI.“.
This is of course short for, “For crying out loud, you are assuming entirely too much about airport clothing etiquette because you think it is all about you but it is not since your clothing (or lack thereof) is sending too bloody much information about you that none of us signed up for nor want which is to say that some of those surprises underneath your basketball shorts or skin tight leggings need to be kept at home in the privacy of your space, not polluting mine.“
We definitely have a culture problem with freedom being taken to the nth degree. I of course respect your freedom to do what you want, but when you absolutely disregard how you might be perceived and even more important how you look and think that’s freedom, you’ve lost all sense of propriety.
There is a place for a collar for men and nice fitting slacks for women. The airport is such a place and while I’m at it, the cruise lines that sell cheap cruises need to get a grip, raise their prices , and weed out those with zero public behavioral standards.
Here’s to more collars, ladies who’ve been taught what the word, “ladylike” means, no belly buttons on display even from 15 year olds and some writer who can take them on as you requested.
Until then, here’s to calling out and shaming miscreants.
Excellent!! It used to be that airlines employees and their families had to dress up in order to be on standby... I totally agree on the yoga pants. Yuk!