Next time you’re about to board a plane, take a close look at your outfit, then ask yourself if you’re wearing anything that could land you in jail. It sounds outrageous, but that actually happened aboard a recent U-S Airways flight. The plane’s captain asked a passenger to pull up his low-slung pants, because his underwear was showing. 

 

The passenger refused, so, the captain conducted a citizen's arrest and placed him in jail. Bloggers have nicknamed the incident the “sagging pants” case.  But it’s causing a controversial debate, can an airline tell you what to wear?

 

Legal experts say the answer is maybe, since airlines are private businesses. Flight crews are legally allowed to ask a passenger to cover up or leave the plane. However, there isn’t an official airline dress code policy, so, that can lead to wildly different opinions of what’s appropriate and what’s not. For example, even though U-S Airways busted the sagging pants passenger. Just days earlier, they allowed another passenger to fly who was only wearing a skimpy halter top and underwear.

 

That’s why you may see more airlines enforcing stricter dress codes in the future, to avoid this kind of controversy. We’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime, you may want to go into full body cover-up mode the next time you fly.