Saunders: Who wouldn’t love to fly in friendlier skies?

By Debra J. Saunders / Las Vegas Review-Journal

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is my new hero. Duffy is promoting a civility campaign that urges passengers to be polite and dress up rather than wear sweatpants and slippers when they fly. If everyone dresses better, everyone will behave better, Duffy offered.

It’s an idea that could bring smiles to the friendly skies around the holidays.

During a press conference at Newark Liberty International Airport last week, Duffy was wearing a suit and red tie. This was an outfit that answered the question: What would President Donald Trump wear?

The good news: Duffy did not propose a business-attire dress code that would be enforced on board.

Duffy ticked through the litany of air travel woes — long lines, brawls at baggage claim, flight delays and cancellations often due to bad weather — that have resulted in an uptick in incivility.

According to the Department of Transportation, there has been a 400 percent increase in outbursts on planes since 2019. Clearly, the flying public has been getting surly. One in 5 flight attendants report experiencing physical incidents on the job.

There’s no law Congress can pass to make people behave more courteously, Duffy acknowledged, but maybe dressing up will encourage fliers to act more adult.

Duffy offered commonsense advice, which he noted most people already observe: Don’t take your shoes off. If you’re watching a movie, wear headphones. Say please and thank you.

Because lines will be longer, “Come a little early.” Passengers who give themselves more time are more likely to arrive at their destinations with a good attitude, Duffy added.

Confession time: I love to fly. I love going places. I love coming home. I love people-watching in airports. I love to see what people are wearing. In the terminal, I eavesdrop shamelessly. It’s one of my favorite things about travel.

Sadly, too much of the chatter in airports these days is about how awful flying is, how irksome the airlines have become and how infuriating people find nightmarish cancellations and even minor delays.

And yet, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the percentage of Americans who fly keeps expanding.

In 1971, fewer than half of Americans had ever flown, and only 1 in 5 had flown in the last year. In 2023, fewer than half had flown in the last year, and while 85 percent of Americans had flown in their lifetimes.

It seems the more people fly, the less of an occasion flying becomes.

I don’t wear cocktail dresses when I fly, but I try to dress well and comfortably. Duffy’s crusade tells me that I can do better.

At the Newark presser, FAA administrator Bryan Bedford took pride when he said, “This week is our Super Bowl.” (Not that passengers should act like they’re at the Super Bowl.)

The government, Bedford cautioned, will not hesitate to use its enforcement authority for those who break rules.

I’ve seen how that works. Many years ago when there was shuttle service between Washington, New York and Boston, I was on a flight that ended with a fellow passenger being walked off the plane in handcuffs. There was a $10 dispute, and he would not pay his full fare on the credit card trolley, which was the standard way to pay on that shuttle.

I can only imagine what his legal bills were. He probably didn’t realize that passengers don’t have the same rights on a plane that they enjoy on a sidewalk.

So there is one advantage to all those viral videos of air rage episodes: They end with the consequences.