US Politics
Passengers are wearing pajamas to the airport in pushback against Sean Duffy’s etiquette push
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Passengers are wearing pajamas to the airport more often in protest against Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s etiquette push.
The Trump administration has launched a campaign to “restore courtesy and class to air travel,” dubbed “The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You.”
In a press conference before Thanksgiving, Duffy urged flyers to “dress a little better.”
“Whether it’s a pair of jeans and a decent shirt,” he said, “I would encourage people to maybe dress a little better, which maybe encourages us to maybe behave all a little better. Let’s try not to wear slippers and pajamas as we come to the airport,” the transportation secretary said.
Some passengers took that as an invitation to do the exact opposite.
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Democratic activist Johnny Palmadessa posted a video days after Duffy’s announcement, wearing pajama bottoms at the airport as a sound bite of the transportation secretary’s advice played in the background. He wrote that he was “triggering” Duffy with his sleepwear.
“The priorities of this administration are so not straight,” Palmadessa told The Washington Post.
He said President Donald Trump and Duffy should focus more on affordability issues so Americans have enough money to dress nicely.
Another TikToker recently shared a video showing off her sweatsuit at the airport. As audio of Duffy urging travelers to stop wearing pajamas played, the TikToker posed for the camera in her casual attire.
“Well now I absolutely must wear my pajamas to the airport!” she wrote.
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A third person on TikTok filmed herself walking with her luggage in a matching pajama set and slippers and wrote, “Me on the way to the airport after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told us to ‘dress with some respect.’”
The Independent has reached out to the Transportation Department for comment.
When announcing the Transportation Department’s new civility campaign in November, the agency provided what it called data to support “the feeling that travel has become more unruly.”
It said since 2019, the Federal Aviation Administration has seen a 400 percent increase in outbursts on airplanes, and that there have been nearly 14,000 “unruly passenger incidents” in the past four years.
