A former Emirates flight attendant put out a public service announcement this holiday season, when traveling is at an all-time high, about why you should always opt for pants as your travel attire.
“This is your warning that you need to wear pants on a plane,” TikTok user Drake Pooley (@drakepooley) starts in his TikTok. The video now has over 1.8 million views. And it comes on the heels of several airplane incidents.
“Do not wear shorts,” Pooley continues. “If you have an emergency, and you need to use the slide, you will literally burn your skin off.”
Pooley shows a photo of a Emirates aircraft with an emergency escape slide pulled out. “This stuff,” the content creator gestures to the slide with his finger. “Is designed to get you down as fast as possible, and it burns.”
Pooley continues, “Like, to the point where you’re sliding down, you’re supposed to keep your hands on top of your thighs, because if you try to use your hands on the slide, your hands will get burns and your skin can get burned off.”
“So, always wear pants on a plane just in case,” he recommends. “This could save you a lot of pain.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Pooley via TikTok comment and direct message as well as to Emirates via press email.
Is this sound advice?
Indeed. Travelers United echoes Pooley’s advice. “In an evacuation, dresses and shorts offer little protection in the cabin and none from friction burns from evacuation slides,” it notes.
Furthermore, another flight attendant named Cher came out and said that she personally will never wear shorts on a plane. “Say we have an evacuation. You have to go down the slide. Your butt cheeks are going to be sizzled off,” the flight attendant of five years said in her own TikTok.
In addition to it being a safety precaution, wearing pants is also a health precaution. You skin can more easily com in contact with germs and bacteria if you are in shorts.
Viewers found this ominous
The timing of the advice made flyers feel all the more anxious.
“The timing of this is something,” one viewer wrote.
“Ughh waiting for a plane right now and all my FYP is plane crashes and this,” a second commented.
“I don’t like my fyp right now. First it was all the post about the recent plane crashes and now this. I’m flying home after new years,” a third echoed.
Recent airplane incidents
On Dec. 25, an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash killed 38 passengers in Kazakhstan. Then on Dec. 29, a Jeju Air Boeing crash-landed while in South Korea, killing 179 passengers onboard. Two more airplane incidents have reportedly occurred since, though no one was injured in either.
According to Bloomberg, 2024 is now deadliest year for commercial aviation travel since 2018.
@drakepooley #greenscreen apropos of nothing in the news right now #plane #travel #airplane ♬ original sound – Drake Pooley
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