More and more airlines are going this route: Classic uniform rules and the division into “male” and “female” are increasingly being abolished. Large providers such as United or Alaska Airlines have also decided to offer gender-neutral alternatives.

In Europe, Virgin Atlantic recently announced that it would no longer rely on classic gender roles. The airline now allows cabin crew, cockpit crew and ground crew to wear the uniform of their choice, “regardless of their gender, gender identity or gender expression,” the company said in a press release.

The cabin crew are now also permitted to have visible tattoos. The holiday airline Condor recently announced this easing in Germany. In addition, Virgin Atlantic announced that it would give all travelers additional pronoun ID cards and book flights with an option other than male or female. The step has apparently paid off for the airline.

According to chief executive Shai Weiss, applications for cabin jobs are up 100 percent after the airline announced the change in September.

The change was also otherwise an “enormous” help in receiving applications for a large number of positions in the company, Weiss told the newspaper “The Telegraph”. In times of staff shortages, this is a great advantage.

The new uniform rules are a giant step for Virgin in that the airline only abolished the make-up requirement for women three years ago and gave them the choice of wearing trousers. Flight attendants were previously allowed to do this, but they had to officially apply for it.

This article was written by Laura Frommberg

Putin has recruited 300,000 new soldiers through his partial mobilization for the Ukraine war. Many of them are sent to the front without any training – with devastating consequences. Whole battalions are burned in trenches, reports a Russian recruit.

Around Mariupol, among other places, the Russian military is erecting new anti-tank barriers in preparation for Ukrainian breakthroughs. Previously, the troops had already established the so-called “Wagner Line”. Such locks simplify defense – but eat up resources elsewhere, according to a military expert.

Soldiers from a Russian naval brigade openly criticized their commanders on Telegram. Their actions resulted in the brigade losing 300 men in just four days. “They don’t care about anything except adorning themselves. They call people flesh,” the letter reads.

The original of this article “Airline changes uniform and the number of applications immediately explodes” comes from aeroTelegraph.