Flight attendants at yet another airline are swapping out their high heels and dress shoes for trendy and comfortable sneakers, although the German airline Eurowings isn’t quite ready to completely abandon the traditional aircrew uniform just yet.
At the start of September, Eurowings employees were gifted all-white branded Puma sneakers, but while office staff will be allowed to wear the sports shoes whenever they wish, flight attendants will only be permitted to wear the sneakers on select ‘Sneaker Flydays’.
The first Sneaker Flyday won’t take place until October 7 and then it will repeat on the first Friday of each month. On all other days, flight attendants will be expected to wear black leather high heels or dress shoes.
The airline says Puma gifted the sneakers as a “sign of recognition for all the extra miles that Eurowing’s employees went during the pandemic”.
“The sneaker symbolizes the change of the zeitgeist, which combines business and casual through a loose dress code,” a spokesperson for the Lufthansa Group low-cost airline explained. “Eurowings now wants to show that the sporty outfit also fits its reorientation as a value airline.”
Last August, Ukrainian carrier SkyUp Airlines unveiled a bright and bold new flight attendant uniform that included an orange pantsuit and Nike Air Max sneakers, as part of a deliberate attempt to challenge “conservative classics” in favour of a “modern and comfortable image”.
Icelandic airline PLAY also dresses its flight attendants in white Nike branded sneakers as part of the world’s first ‘gender non-specific’ flight attendant uniform and Japanese carrier low-cost carrier ZIPAIR allows its crew to wear white sneakers along with more traditional-looking shoes.
The overriding theme is that sneakers are being embraced by low-cost carriers but are yet to catch on at full-service airlines. Lufthansa did, however, allow flight attendants to wear special Adidas branded sneakers for one day only and that was back in 2018.
