Proposal: A Dress Code for Airline Passengers.

Syndicated Travel Writer Christopher Elliott has come up with a suggestion that makes a lot of sense. He proposes that the Airlines adopt and enforce a dress code. 

Those of us who fly regularly are painfully aware of the passengers who board flights to and from these islands wearing T-shirts with off-color slogans, shorts and rubber slippers.  In other words, people getting on their flights looking like slobs.

But there’s more than just aesthetics behind Elliott’s proposal. Flight crews will tell you that better dressed passengers are far less likely to cause trouble during the flight than those who board looking like they live on the streets.

I couldn’t agree more, although I suspect flights to and from these islands are more likely to have the problem of passengers inappropriately dressed than, let’s say, flights to Boise or Louisville.

There was a time when people routinely dressed for travel. I clearly remember traveling by train from my home near Hartford, Connecticut, to visit a cousin in Darien, essentially a bedroom community for New York City. It was a trip of about 90 minutes duration, but my mother had me dressed up for the trip in a sport coat, white shirt and tie. And I was perhaps all of eleven or twelve years old at the time.

Elliott’s idea would call for each individual airline to adopt its own dress code. Granted, there could be some confusion—some articles of clothing acceptable on one airline, and not on another—but surely every airline should have the discretion to welcome aboard a well-dressed, well-behaved passenger who doesn’t meet one of the specific dress code requirements.

At any rate—notwithstanding the fact that Maui flights must include more of the T-shirt-rubber slippers clientele than most destinations, I not only think it’s a good idea, I do believe 95-percent of passengers would support the idea . . . even if it meant up-grading their own personal travel wardrobe.