Whether female cabin crew members are required to wear high heels at work depends on the airline they work for.
The employer airline will not just set the rules for whether its flight attendants have to wear heels, but also how long they have to wear them for and what height.
Some airlines are more progressive than others and positively embrace flat shoes. For example, Ryanair and Easyjet have long not required high heels to be worn by their crew.
But other carriers are seemingly still stuck in the past.
While many airlines still require heels, public opinion is firmly against cabin crew being forced to wear high heels in their workplace.
In fact a survey conducted by YouGov on 16 March, 2022 of 3,996 British adults found that only 6% of respondents believed that flight attendants “probably should” or “definitely should” have to wear high heels as part of their uniform.
A huge 80% of respondents were against cabin crew being required to wear heels. A curious 14% didn’t know what they thought.
It does seem that airlines are listening, or some are. Here’s a timeline of recent moves to remove the compulsory wearing of heels by flight attendants.
May 2019: Norwegian Air drops its heel requirements in the face of public pressure over its dress code. “We now allow female crew members to wear flat shoes at all times…” a spokesperson told Fox News.
April 2020: Japan Airlines ditched compulsory heels for female flight attendants to co-incide with the introduction of its new uniforms. “We took into account gender equality and the safety and health of our employees,” a representative said.
October 2021: Low cost Ukranian airline SkyUp swapped heels for sneakers after collecting feedback from flight attendants about their uniform. “Shoes on heels look beautiful, I do not argue with that, but feet suffer and swell by the end of the flight. Sneakers are absolutely cool,” a relieved attendant told Reuters.
June 2023: Australian airline Qantas became the latest to announce that high heels would no longer be compulsory for its cabin crew. “Fashions change and so have our style guidelines over the years,” the airline said in a statement.
You might think it difficult to understand how high heels could be a uniform requirement of any job, let alone one that is focussed on ensuring the safety and comfort of the customers.
We agree. And we’re pleased to see that more and more airlines are agreeing that high heels should not be compulsory for any flight attendant.
After all, being a flight attendant can be a difficult and lowly paid job at times. Language fluency, swimming testing and a clean criminal record are just some of the hurdles faced by flight attendants just to get their wings.
It doesn’t seem easy to see how walking in high heels should be added as a further requirement.
Yet there’s no universal dress code for cabin crew so whether the attendant on your flight has to wear high heels only in the airport, just before takeoff and landing or throughout the flight comes down to whether her employers will make her do it. Right now, many of them still do.
Feature image credit: Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash