Just Plane Ridiculous

It appears that airlines are now adding to their role in the fight against terrorism by seeking out and capturing fashion terrorists.

On June 15, US Airways kicked a 20-year old man off a flight because he refused to pull up his baggy pants. The man’s pants, according to the report by the air carrier, were “below his buttocks, but above the knees, and his boxer shorts were showing.” First, let’s get the important legal issue out of the way so as not to be distracted by the fashion issue. He was black. It's too easy to get into the stereotype of a young black man with dreadlocks wearing saggy, baggy pants. I won't except to say if US Airways was picking on him, they are US Assholes.

I wasn't there, so my view of the circumstances is limited to my computer screen. What I gather is a flight attendant, whom I'm guessing spends too much time during layovers reading Glamour Magazine, did not feel the young man's pajama pants were sitting properly at the waist. When asked to pull them up, the young man declined. The captain got involved, evacuated the plane, and - I'm cutting to the chase here - had him arrested. A response from a spokesman defending the airline's action stated the captain was within his rights to have the man removed from the plane because the man's refusal could lead the captain to think, "What if he refuses something else in the air?" Like what? Stay calm if the flight goes down?

It's kind of a stretch for me to see not pulling up your pants as an indication that maybe you won't put your tray table up if told, or not fasten your seat belt when the light goes on. Maybe the attendant was offended. Maybe some passengers were. If that was the case, I thought, maybe there was some merit in the flight crew's request for him to be properly attired. I thought that maybe the crew was protecting small children from a visual image they shouldn't see until they at least reached middle school, or until they got home and fired up Grand Theft Auto on their PlayStation. That's where my thoughts were taking me.

His dream to be a runway model was 

fulfilled when he got Runway 7L/25R at

Sky Harbor Int'l Airport in Phoenix.

My thoughts and I didn't travel for very long, however, because the next airline story we read was about US Airways letting a male passenger fly dressed in women's underwear. Same airline, six days before the baggy pants incident. Again, let’s get the important legal issue out of the way so as not to be distracted by the fashion issue. The man was white.

The unidentified man, middle-aged and apparently stunning in heels, claimed he's a "frequent flier" (wink, wink) and he often boards airplanes dressed in women's underwear and thigh-high stockings - probably the kind one would find in, oh, I don't know, Glamour Magazine? His outfit, according to airline personnel, was acceptable because it didn't expose any offending body parts. No, didn't expose any parts, but certainly highlighted a few. This man suddenly became the validation for the black man's complaint, and in my view, every black man's complaint going back to the 60's. The man allowed himself to be interviewed by the media on the condition of anonymity. I'm guessing by the time this blog gets posted, he will have ironically fucked that condition up by talking to the media.

In my lifetime I’ve watched pants make a slow, southerly migration from above the navel, so it’s not surprising to me they’re as close to the knees as they are now. Every generation since I was born has complained about the newer generation’s clothing style changes. No doubt the next generation will make fashion strides that will cause a previous one to cringe. I’m not a big fan of the sagging pants, myself, but I get it. It’s the style. My teenage son sags his pants, albeit in a white, middle-class, conservative way. He’s not showing the crack of his ass, nor does he walk around bow-legged with a hand crimping the waistband to keep his pockets off his ankles. I’m okay with that. More okay with that than him wearing his sister's stockings. If I had to choose, I'd rather sit on a plane next to a kid in his baggy pajamas than a middle-aged white guy wearing chick's underwear. Or a dude who hasn't showered for a couple of days. Or a fat woman doused in some after-bath armpit douche.

US Airways has no dress code, but they enforce one. The airline industry has set standards for just about everything, and my experience has been they enforce the actual rules with the same narrow-minded subjectivity as the do the non-rules. There are other things they should be giving their attention to instead of how we're dressed. They come up short in one area that needs regulating - kids - and here are some rules I think should be put in play:

Enough is enough! I have had it with these

 motherfuckin’ kids on this motherfuckin’ plane!

1) Parents with children between the ages of "potentially annoying" and "need to be smacked" should be required to pay a security deposit for their kid's behavior. If the kid disturbs the passengers during the flight, the parents forfeit the deposit.

2) If a child cannot walk onto the plane with his/her own two stubby little legs, the munchkin counts as a carry-on item.

3) If the kid counts as carry-on and doesn't fit inside the sizer at the boarding gate, the kid gets checked.

Rules like that make it a win-win flight for everyone. The passengers get a flight without a few brats messing it up, and the airlines generate more fees. And God knows, they need more fees. A 2011 report came out that the airline industry made only $3.8 billion on luggage charges and other fees in the first six months of the year. Go ahead, wipe the tear from your eye.

$3.8 billion. Billion. With a “B.” And they did it in six months. That’s close to $21 million per day, or considering that a person blinks their eyes an average of 23,040 times per day, about $910 in the blink of an eye. The airline industry can make $5.7 billion in the time it takes a woman to ultimately push out a baby. Talk about getting screwed.

$3.8 billion. With that kind of profit I'd think the airlines could post a Blackwell or Cojocaru at the boarding gate. Hell, dig up Joan and Melissa Rivers and throw them out there, too. Lay some red carpet down the gangway, glow it up with some low angle spotlights. Set up a panel of judges. Encourage us to put on our best duds and strut our shit. Winner gets a free upgrade to first class! Or...

Spend some of that money teaching your employees that unless they can reasonably articulate why an issue is a safety concern, then their opinions are like assholes and expressing the former risks making themselves look like the latter. They need to understand that you can't regulate fashion sense because, like common sense, there isn't any.