Starting this week, passengers who decide to fly with Spirit Airlines will have to be careful about what they wear and, in some cases, even cover their tattoos before boarding the company’s planes.
The company has reshaped the transportation contract, declaring passengers “shall not be permitted to board” or “may be required to leave an aircraft” if they are “barefoot or inadequately clothed, or whose clothing or article, including body art, is lewd, obscene, or offensive in nature.” The document also gives the same treatment to those who intend to board in clothes that are deemed inappropriate, specifically naming, “see-through clothing, not adequately covered, exposed breasts, buttocks or other private parts.”
This is not the first time the airline has urged its customers to read the flight regulations before reserving a seat on its planes. Last October, two female passengers were not allowed to board because they were wearing a top that did not meet the company’s standards, according to the company’s standards.
Recently, however, a 43-year-old man was on a flight to Los Angeles, wearing a sweatshirt that read “FVCK HATE WORLD TOUR.” The cabin crew, asked the man, a father of four, to remove the garment, as it could be offensive due to “obscene language.” Although the 43-year-old man obeyed, he was later escorted off the plane. “It caught me, like, totally by surprise,” he said, “Like, ‘Man, are you serious?’”
Spirit Airlines is not the only company over the years to have adopted such regulations. In recent times, several companies in the industry have asked their customers to wear outfits that are not too “provocative” or in any case “sober” before boarding the plane. As could easily be expected, some companies have received a lot of criticism from travelers who have been “reprimanded” by the cabin crew.
This is what happened, for example, in 2022, when Olivia Culpo, a former Miss Universe, was forced to wear a sweatshirt to cover her top and shorts before she could travel on American Airlines. Tisha Rowe, a Houston doctor, has also publicly criticized the Fort Worth-based airline for an incident in July 2019 when she was asked to cover her floral dress with a blanket. In 2022, a woman was stopped from boarding her flight for wearing a top with obscenities, while another said she was threatened with an “indefinite flight ban” for a jumper that said “F*** Biden”.
While most airlines post such a warning, Spirit Airlines has now become the most proactive about enforcing it.
