How short is “skimpy”?

Calcutta/San Diego: Kyla Ebbert, 23, was ordered off an American plane because the airline thought her skirt too short.
Just as she had settled down in her seat, a Southwest Airlines employee asked her to leave the plane, Ebbert told NBC’s Today show yesterday.
“You’re dressed inappropriately. This is a family airline. You’re too provocative to fly on this plane,” she quoted the employee as saying.
Ebbert, a student headed from San Diego city to Tucson in Arizona for a doctor’s appointment, was allowed back on the plane after she offered to adjust her sweater. But she felt humiliated and embarrassed.
Airline operators in India said they had no passenger dress codes but would not allow anyone to board in “skimpy” dresses.
“The co-passengers may raise objections,” a Jet Airways official explained. But how short is “skimpy”?
“Usually, airline staff at the airport decide if anyone’s dress is improper,” he replied.
Officials of national carrier Indian (now Air India) and British Airways agreed. “We would go by the reaction of the other passengers,” a BA spokesperson said.
An official of a private Indian airline said a flier could be offloaded if he wore a sleeveless shirt that showed rashes or festering wounds on his arm.
The director-general of civil aviation, Kanu Gohen, confirmed there were no written dress codes for passengers, but added: “Indians don’t wear indecent clothes, especially while travelling on a plane.”
Airline sources said some passengers do wear short T-shirts or shorts on Mumbai-Goa flights “but they are not so bad that the passengers need to be offloaded”.
However, Kingfisher airhostesses, who work in skirts, “can’t wear short skirts, T-shirts, shorts or other revealing dresses” while flying on free passes on vacation.
09/09/07 Sanjay Mandal/AP/The Telegraph

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2007, General Aviation Sep 2007