THE Trump administration has announced a fresh campaign prior to holiday travel, telling Americans they must “dress with respect” at airports.
The new rule is cited to have been put in place due to past reports from
airlines of poor behavior on flights.
If it isn’t followed, passengers run the risk of facing fines, or even flight bans.
According to 2025 data from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there have been 1,431 reports of
ill-behaved passengers up to November of this year.
This has resulted in a total of $2.1 million being dished out on fines.
The hope is to crack down on the lack of civility onboard and towards air travel staff by rebranding the
aviation industry to be something more elegant and classy.
Transportation secretary
Sean Duffy confirmed the initiative through a video on
Instagram, depicting how juxtaposing behaviour onboard
flights today is in comparison to the past.
The clip begins by showing footage of old-fashioned
American air travel, followed by a series of shots of what flying can unfortunately be like in the modern day.
It includes fighting on flights, people dangling their bare feet on open seats, and the brawling state people are often met by at the dreaded baggage claim.
The video then cuts to show Sean simply saying: “Manners don’t stop at the gate.
To assess whether you’re fulfilling the criteria of attending with “civility”, a passenger is encouraged to ask themselves five key questions.
They include: “are you helping a pregnant woman placing her bags in the overhead bin, are you
dressing with respect, are you keeping control of your children, are you saying thank you to your flight attendants, and are you saying please and thank you in general?”
Dressing with respect, according to Sean, means making an effort to look presentable.
“We have unruly passengers on airplanes. People dress up like they’re going to bed when they fly,” he said on the matter.
“Help people out, be in a mood mood, dress up, bring civility back to travel.”