More inclusive language with passengers
This is just some commercial promotion, but worth pointing at anyway.
That’s so sweet, but…
What “gender options”??? What gender options are there on commercial airlines? There aren’t any. They don’t bring you 10 miniature pretzels in a tiny bag that is either pink or blue, they don’t bring you anything that is either pink or blue, so what “gender options” are they talking about?
This shit gets stupider by the day.
My guess is that “gender options when you book” refers to expansion beyond “Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms” or whatever list they may have used. The “when you book” I think is important; it’s about check boxes on ticketing screens, not pretzels in the aircraft.
But what options are they offering for those who identify as otters? I didn’t see ONE THING about trans-otters there. TOAO!!!
Really, who gives a flying fuck? What are they going to do with that information, write up a passenger list with accompanying stickers so that everyone on board can Validate and Affirm the Special People. Maybe this is a PR gimmick to win over the woke segment of the market. Soon all the airlines will start
panderingcatering to the Pronoun People. With any luck, they’re doing this on the downhill side of the trend, just as the wheels (wings?) come off the gender juggernaught.“Star Alliance: All the fucks we give are flying fucks.”
Sack @ 4, Excellent. :D
So are they now changing German to drop “Die’ and Der” and replacing all definite articles with ‘Das”? Is Lufthansa now the official arbiter of German grammar? Or is this just a sop to their Anglo/American passengers?
It might be useful to know the sex of the passengers when they have to sort the remains after a crash.
Airlines ask for your preferred title because they’re not allowed to ask how much you weigh. Not so long ago, an airline in Pakistan discovered they’d been overloading their planes for years because their load-estimation software assumed that anyone titled “Miss” was a pre-teen girl…. (i.e. within a fixed weight limit, light passengers = more cargo)
Obviously, any use of special pronouns will throw that off. Maybe they’re assuming only a few people will actually use they/them? Of course, they already have pre-pronoun records squirrelled away for all prior passengers, they’ll just use the old records. What’s the pronoun equivalent of deadnaming?
Of course, since communications to/from an airline are never going to use third person anyway… gimmick…
Flight attendants can also use this data to prevent departure delays when they reassure any devout, ultra-Orthodox Jewish man on their flight that the passenger who has seated beside him, though in dress, heels, and lipstick, is actually in no danger of menstruating in his presence. Or ever.
Went to a new to me coffee bar in Berkeley (of course) and right up front they had to inform us about their employees’ preferred pronouns. Ugh. Too bad the coffee was so f&@$)) good