Fly Guy: Do well-dressed fliers get more perks?

ByABC News
August 10, 2011, 11:08 AM

— -- When a friend of mine checked in for a recent flight from San Francisco to Vancouver, he was surprised that the Air Canada gate agent handed him a first class boarding pass. What was so unusual about this? Several things: He had bought an economy class ticket. He rarely flies on Air Canada and thus has no frequent-flier status on the airline. Even more unusual, the flight was half empty so this wasn't an oversell upgrade situation. So why the extra love?

Because he was wearing a suit. Yep, my pal asked the gate agent why he was so blessed and she answered, "our station manager noticed how well dressed you were and told me to upgrade you."

I, too, was upgraded recently on a United flight from LAX to New York, and I, too, was wearing a suit (if I'm going on a business trip, I wear my suit on the plane, in part because I don't want it to take up too much room in my carry on). I only have 80,000 lifetime miles in United's MileagePlus program, and before you say, "Yeah, but they know who you are," trust me, they don't.

Not wanting to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth, I didn't ask the gate agent why I was upgraded from a frequent-flier economy-class seat all the way through business class and up to first class. In fact, when I heard my name over the PA system my heart skipped several beats because I assumed that the flight was oversold and I was being bumped, owing to my lack of status. But I'm going to guess it was because I was the only person in the waiting area who wasn't dressed like I was about to head off to the gym.

'You can't fly on Concorde! You're not wearing a tie!'

Think this is nonsense? Well, not really. For a couple of years in the 1980's just before they went belly up, I worked as a consultant for Eastern Airlines. As such, each month I was given a stack of flight coupons. I'd just make a reservation and hand one of these coupons over at the ticket counter and I could fly anywhere in the Eastern system for free, in first class no less. One evening I was flying to Boston and was curious to see that the agent handed me a seat in economy. "Is first class full?" I meekly inquired. "The way you're dressed, you don't even deserve to fly at all," he scolded. What was my sin? I was wearing a suit and a nice pair of shoes, but had taken off my tie. Into economy I went.