Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says stop wearing pajamas on airplanes. Here's what LIers think.

If you’re flying during the holiday travel season, remember that the federal government wants you to "dress with respect." Also, say please and thank you and keep your children under control.

Those guidelines come from a U.S. Department of Transportation civility campaign called "The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You," which debuted last week with a 90-second DOT video juxtaposing footage of commercial air travel from the middle of our previous, better-dressed century — suits for men, gloves and pillbox hats for women — with a montage of scenes taken by cellphone from our slouchy, violent present.

The department and its secretary, Sean Duffy, did not say what it means to dress "respectfully," but one can infer a broken windows theory of civility: sweatpants and T-shirts, combined with run of the mill rampant discourtesy, give rise to passenger behavior like that depicted on the video, including punching, slapping, kicking, and, in one particularly odious instance, someone dragging their bare toe across the video touch screen embedded in the plane’s seat back.

At Long Island MacArthur Airport in Islip Wednesday, the campaign was off to an uncertain start. Most people waiting for planes or getting off them said they had not heard of it, but that they agreed with at least some of what DOT was proposing. "Please and thank you is common sense," said Kathy Connolly, 52, a retired Suffolk County police officer from West Islip. But she didn’t think passengers should necessarily dress business casual to fly. The important thing was to be "comfortable, as long as you’re not flashing body parts," she said.

Steve Schlackman, 59, a patent attorney from Miami visiting family in Lindenhurst for Thanksgiving, said he found nothing objectionable in such a public service announcement about passenger conduct and dress, so long as it stopped there. "People take it or leave it. If you start penalizing people because they don't do it, that's a different story."   

Lisa Lagrega, 66, of Bay Shore but bound for South Florida, said she usually wore sweatpants when flying but had decided to dress — a black ensemble, with matching heeled boots — to honor the holiday and the DOT. The department shouldn't take action against children and their accompanying adults, though, she said. "You can only control them to a certain extent. You have to have patience." 

The DOT civility program appeared to have found a staunch supporter in Sam Cavalieri, 83, of Moriches, who was on his way to a family Thanksgiving in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. "We should learn to get along better," he said, adding that Duffy's appeal was "right on the numbers." But government should have no role in this kind of conduct, he said. "That should come from the home. We should be teaching our children that."

In a news release last week, the DOT said its civility campaign came with data proving that "travel has become unruly." The department cited a 400% increase of in-flight outbursts since 2019, with 13,800 unruly passenger incidents since 2021. In 2024, there were twice as many unruly passenger events as 2019, according to the department.

Much of the activity depicted in the DOT video could, at a minimum, get you kicked off the plane. The contract of carriage for MacArthur carrier Southwest Airlines, for example, stipulates that passengers who engage in verbal or physical confrontations with crew or other passengers can be removed from an aircraft. The same likely goes for toe draggers, who would fall under a clause covering passengers who are barefoot and older than five.

The DOT release and the video did not address other possible reasons for passengers’ bad behavior, though there are many. A May report by Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, the Denver, Colorado-based consumer advocacy organization, noted that flight cancellations and delays increased from 2023 to 2024, while complaints against U.S. airlines about matters including canceled flights, lost baggage and stalled refunds reached an all-time high of 66,675. It was the fourth year in the last five that complaints reached new highs, according to the report.

Frontier, one of the MacArthur carriers, had the most complaints per 100,000 passengers among the 10 largest airlines for the third year in a row, according to the report. JetBlue, another MacArthur carrier, had the third-highest ratio. Airline representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

In a phone interview, report author Teresa Murray said her organization supports good passenger behavior — "Being nice is the right thing to do" — with a focus on lost baggage and TSA lines. Standards of passenger dress are "not something we get into," she said.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.