Amid a push for greater inclusivity that came amid the reckoning that took place in 2020, a number of airlines have been evaluating their policies and instituting changes to rules or practices that have been in place for years.
Delta Air Lines (DAL) recently changed its uniform policy to allow flight attendants of any gender to choose whether to wear the version with pants or a skirt. In Australia, Qantas Airways (QUBSF) clarified that anyone can choose whether to wear or not wear makeup while almost every airline in the U.S. had at some point made bold promises to increase minority representation at all levels of the work chain.
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Back in 2021, Delta’s Chief Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Social Impact Officer Kyra Lynn Johnson has drawn attention to the fact that the airline still uses the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” when making announcements at the gate or at the start of the flight in the cabin.
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“So we’re beginning to take a hard look at things like our gatehouse announcements: you know, we welcome ‘ladies and gentlemen,'” Johnson said during a February 2021 panel on inclusion in the aviation industry. ‘And we’ve asked ourselves, ‘Is that as gender inclusive as we want to be?’ We’re looking at some legacy language that exists in some of our employee manuals and getting to the root of the way some things are described.”
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While three years have passed since that panel and Delta has yet to officially announce that it is getting rid of language that many do not believe needs to be replaced, Johnson’s comments have been once again gathering steam from critics on social media platforms such as X after the Daily Mail reupped the video from 2021.
Some of the most common comments are about how a given person will “no longer use” Delta, tying them to present-day ideological wars about gender rules in the Olympics and quips about how ‘comrade’ is a greeting more in-line.”
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Delta says it wants to be ‘a workplace where all people can thrive’
Delta has not been commenting on whether it has formally retired, kept or is allowing pilots to make their own decisions on “ladies and gentlemen” but issued a statement saying that it is “demonstrating an authentic commitment to being a workplace where all people can thrive and where we reflect the rich humanity of the customers and communities we serve across the globe.”
A number of other airlines in other countries, including Germany’s Lufthansa (DLAKF) and Air Canada (ACDVF) , have already retired announcements using “ladies and gentlemen” in favor of more neutral terms such as “everyone.” Often, airlines will make the change quietly in order to avoid the kind of outcry that takes place when comments such as Johnson’s get picked up by conservative outlets.
“We will be amending our onboard announcements to modernize them and remove specific references to gender,” an Air Canada representative said when the airline committed to the change back in 2019 with additional comments about how the airline wants to “ensure our customers are comfortable and respected when they choose to travel with us.”
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