A budget airline in Ukraine is ditching its old uniform of high heels and pencil skirts for ladies employees for a lighter alternative. SkyUp Airlines, founded in 2016, is one amongst the youngest low-cost airlines in Ukraine, but already one amongst its biggest. The airline said it’s giving crew members the choice of wearing sneakers and trousers on board after surveying the staff and discovering that female employees were “fed up” with high heels, pencil skirts and tight blouses.
“Twelve hours on your feet, flying from Kyiv to Zanzibar and back. If you wear high heels, you’re hardly ready to walk afterwards,” attender Daria Solomennaya, 27, told the BBC. “That includes four hours of security checks and cleaning.”
Besides contributing to health issues — “Many of my colleagues are permanent clients of podologists; their toes and toe-nails are constantly damaged by high heels,” attendant Daria Solomennaya said — there are other problems with tight skirts and heels.
Flight attendants may need to rush to open an gate over a wing if a plane makes an forced landing on water. To do so, they’d need to clamber over people – “Imagine how I could do this during a pencil skirt,” Ms Solomennaya said.
But SkyUp has made a welcome change. in line with a announcement, the airline’s passengers will soon be greeted by flight attendants wearing the new SkyUp Champions uniform. The uniform includes the Nike Air Max 720 sneakers rather than high heels – shoes that feature “incredible cushioning and resilience for optimum comfort all day long.”
The airline said it’s also ditching suits and skirts for “trouser suits with soft tailoring aesthetics and trench coats.”
To come up with these new uniforms, it studied the evolution of cabin crew uniforms from the first 1930s.
“Times have changed, women have changed, so in contrast to the conservative classics, heels, red lipstick and a bun, a new, more modern and cozy image of a ‘champion’ has appeared,” said Marianna Grigorash, Head of SkyUp Airlines Marketing Department, while explaining the concept behind the new orange-coloured uniforms.
“The study and interviews with flight attendants became the place to begin for acting on a brand new image…So we decided to exchange the shoes with sneakers.”
Ms Grigorash told BBC that the corporate realised its female staff failed to want to be seen as “sexualised and playful”.
