United Airlines plans to reorganize the appearance standards for its employees, including cabin crew, pilots, and gate agents. 

The Chicago-based air carrier announced that it will revise existing rules over its employee appearance standards regardless of gender to ensure “an even  better experience” to its customers “when [the staff] look and feel their best.” 

Having accumulated particular feedback from its customers, the airline now seeks to provide “a more authentic representation of the people and cultures that make United the company it is today,” written in the air carrier‘s announcement. 

United Airlines aims to change the already existing standards in staff and is planning to rearrange its requirements in terms of tattoo policy, makeup, and nail polish. 

The changes would be applied to United Airlines cabin crew, flight crew, and gate agents‘ appearance policy, where the new rules could potentially provide the employees of both genders more freedom in terms of personal expression in their looks while on duty. 

Even though the airline will not change its uniform, it will make significant changes to the strict tattoo policy. According to the existing United Airlines rules, none of the air carrier’s employees are allowed to display visible tattoos while interacting with passengers. 

A similar strict policy is applied for other physical appearance standards as well. Cabin crew members, as well as gate agents, are not allowed to wear shoulder-length hairstyles, otherwise hair ‘must be secured up in a bun, twist or ponytail during meal services,” as written in the United Airlines policy. 

Meanwhile, female makeup and nail-look standards while on duty is also strictly described. It forbids female flight attendants to wear bright makeup and nail looks, leaving room for a natural makeup and nail style look only. In the meantime, any makeup and nail polish is prohibited for male cabin crew members. 

United Airlines

However, the potential reorganization of employees’ appearance should ease the current policy by allowing the male staff to paint their nails with nail polish, as well as to wear a particular eye and lip makeup, which should follow the renewed United Airlines appearance standards. 

Although the airline plans to permit having visible tattoos while on duty, the minimum requirements will still be in place. For example, employees will still be prohibited to have any visible body art on their face, hands, or neck. The design of the art should not contain any offensive visuals or wording, as well as exceed a particular size limit. 

United Airlines

As for hair standards, the employees will be able to choose looser hairstyles, but they will still need to be tied back and down to create a shoulder-length image, keeping the look professional and neat.

The new and eased United Airlines employee’s appearance policy should be applied starting from September 15, 2021.