Passport? Check. Suitcase? Check. But what about your pillbox hat?
As travelers head to the airports this holiday season, the U.S. government wants them to rethink their travel checklists, their behavior — and also, their outfits.
Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, began a new campaign on Wednesday that he called “The Golden Age of Travel Starts With You,” complete with a 1960s-style public service announcement that spliced together scenes of the country’s first air travelers, dressed in suits and hats, with present-day clips of in-flight brawls and airport meltdowns. In the background, Frank Sinatra sings “Come Fly With Me.”
But the Transportation Department’s accompanying news release criticized more than fighting. It chastised fliers for forgetting to say “please” and “thank you” and for not helping older or pregnant passengers put their bags in the overhead bins.
“Are you dressing with respect?” Mr. Duffy asks in the video. “Are you keeping control of your children?”
“Bringing civility back, I think, enhances the travel experience for everybody,” Mr. Duffy said in a Fox News Business appearance, adding, “Let’s maybe go back to an era where we didn’t wear our pajamas to the airport.”
The announcement came on the heels of Mr. Duffy’s decision last week to scrap a proposal that would have required airlines to compensate passengers for significant travel disruptions within carriers’ control. The move was the Transportation Department’s latest attempt to roll back passenger protections and regulations geared toward making airlines accountable for improving customer service.
The news release cited data from the Federal Aviation Administration showing that “in-flight outbursts” increased 400 percent since 2019. These instances of air rage became common during the Covid-19 pandemic, when, after months of being locked down, many people returned to flying. The bad behavior coupled with the airlines’ moves to tighten margins and increase profits after a drop-off in demand created a perfect storm.
Videos of passenger misbehavior have also proven to be popular online, where clips on social media of people with their shoes and socks off or passengers brawling in the aisles have gone viral. Mr. Duffy’s video included many of these clips, including one where a passenger scrolls through a flight’s entertainment options on a screen using their toes.
More recently, the travel experience has changed in other ways. A number of highly publicized plane crashes and near misses have brought attention to the lack of air traffic controllers. The recent government shutdown led Mr. Duffy to cancel flights across the country in order to limit the stress on overworked controllers — many of whom had picked up second jobs as they went without pay.
That issue receives a brief mention at the end of the Transportation Department’s news release, promising to build “an all-new air traffic control system” and increase hiring. In Mr. Duffy’s video, the main issue is a key word: “civility.”
“Let’s bring civility and manners back,” Mr. Duffy says over Sinatra’s backing trumpets. “The golden age of travel begins with you.”
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Claire Fahy reports on New York City and the surrounding area for The Times.
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