Woman Mortified After Being Told To Cover Up On Flight

An Air New Zealand passenger was left stunned after she was urged to “cover up” when boarding a flight.

Courtney Newbold was boarding a plane heading from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands to Auckland, before being informed by two separate flight attendants that her outfit was inappropriate.

Courtney has since shared pictures of her outfit, which consisted of high-waisted gym leggings, and two layered crop-tops, on social media, before complaining about her treatment on the Air New Zealand Facebook page.

Facebook - courtney newbold)

“Just wondering what specifically was deemed so inappropriate about me wearing two layered crop tops and high waisted leggings onto a plane?” she asked.

“Also wondering why no one mentioned this to me the whole two hours we waited for the plane, but rather right when I was boarding and could not procure clothing out of thin air?

“Very disappointed at being treated like this. It's 2021, why is an airline making sexist decisions about what I can wear, especially coming from a hot climate?”

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Courtney explained that someone who worked for Air New Zealand had made a comment about her clothing while she was at a boarding gate.

“I asked my friend if I could borrow their jacket,” she explained to Daily Mail Australia.

While Courtney was planning to put the jacket on when she had boarded her flight, she claims to have been stopped by another flight attendant who said Courtney was showing “too much skin”.

“Rarotonga is quite a conservative area so I have a suspicion it's a cultural thing,” Courtney said.

“Most of my clothes were in the stowaway, so I wondered where they expected me to get more clothes from.

'I was lucky I had my friend's jacket, otherwise I probably would have been stopped from boarding the flight.”

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Air New Zealand has since apologised to Courtney for the incident, with the flight operator’s general manager customer Leanne Langridge ringing Courtney personally.

In a statement provided to New Zealand-based news website Stuff, Air New Zealand said: “It’s always our intention to put customers first and ensure those who travel with us feel welcome and have a comfortable journey, and we apologise that this was not Courtney’s experience this time around.

“In this instance, there has been a misunderstanding, but we will be taking this situation as learning and will be re-engaging with our customer-facing teams to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

Courtney was also offered 100 Air New Zealand flight points. 

Topics: Australia, Travel, Life, Real Life

Kimberley Bond

Kim is a journalist at Tyla, and has previously worked at the Evening Standard, Radio Times as well as several national newspapers. A showbiz obsessive and a television fanatic, Kim is particularly interested in celebrity gossip, A-list events and the latest releases on either the big or small screen. Contact her at [email protected]

@0xKimberley