Against the tidal wave of public opposition to those who go barefoot on a plane, there is a countercultural force of people determined to get up in the sky, unencumbered by socks
Not everyone loves seeing a barefoot on a plane(Image: reddit.com/Qwaymind)
They may be the most maligned group in modern society – the barefoot passenger.
There is something about a naked, sock-free foot at 30,000 feet that unifies the public in its fury and disgust in a way rarely seen in the 21st-century world of social media polarisation. And every now and again, there’s a particularly egregious case that captures the attention.
Back in October last year, Boston-based artist Ashley Eisenman filmed a man behind her propping his bare foot into the gap beside her seat for the entire hour-long flight, leaving them mere centimeters from her defenseless arm. “He 1000% should be on the no-fly list ASAP,” she wrote after the traumatic incident.
If a one-hour flight from Reno to San Francisco is bad, then a nine-hour journey from Zurich to New York is the stuff of flakey-skinned, wiggly-toed nightmares. That is what happened to Reddit user u/sarahfayejay, who posted an alarming photo with the caption: “I have a 9-hour flight ahead of me.”
And it’s not an issue that inflicts only those in economy. The alarming Instagram page Passenger Shaming shared a video of a woman lying on her back in first class, with both her bare feet resting against the plane’s wall.
While you might assume that the dislike of this practice was universal and a given, Expedia decided to check. In a 2018 survey of 18,000 travellers it found that more than 90% said it’s never okay to go barefoot on a plane, while a later 2023 Kayak-led piece of peer reviewing found that 76% of travellers “prefer their vision free of toes” on a flight.
Against this tidal wave of public opposition, there is a countercultural force of people determined to get up in the sky, unencumbered by socks.
“I think the trick, generally, is not ask for consent. Idk (I don’t know) why you would anyway, but I’ve seen it done, and the answer was a negative. So don’t ask, just go… Hopefully you won’t get a Karen next to you who does the whole anti-barefeet on the plane shtick that is still doing the rounds…” one Reddit user wrote in response to a member of the r/barefoot community asking how flying with your feet in their birthday suit typically went down.
Another explained their method for getting on board without attracting attention. “I wear a pair of flip-flops or light sandals that I put on when I enter the airport. I go through security in them and take them off while I’m in the terminal. When they announce my flight, I put them back on to go to the gate, board the plane with them on, and once I’m seated, I take them off until the end of my trip,” they explained.
A third wrote: “I flew back home from Florida in January barefoot without incident. Except a young female TSA agent insistently asked two or three times ‘Where are your shoes?’ I told her that ‘the government does not require me to wear shoes.’ She let me pass.”
While the US government may not require its citizens to wear shoes, American, Delta, and United all explicitly reserve the right to refuse or remove barefoot passengers, though enforcement in practice appears inconsistent based on these accounts. In the UK, none of the major airlines such as Ryanair, easyJet and Jet2 have rules specifically banning passengers from taking off their shoes.
While the majority of people may take issue with seeing a bare foot in a public place, there is a subset of people who sincerely believe in going without shoes, whether that be for foot health or spiritual reasons.
Kriss Sands is a no-shoes advocate whose blog, Born to Live Barefoot, details the ups and downs of living without shoes on. It is something he takes seriously. “In general, as a full-time 24/7 barefooter, the only reason I would ever put on shoes would be when there is imminent danger of my feet being damaged or injured otherwise, such as extreme weather conditions, caustic chemicals, fire, or similar conditions,” Kriss writes.
In one post, Kriss argues that a “passenger who chooses to travel barefoot on a plane is harming no one and should never be of anyone else’s concern.”
According to Kriss, it’s only the US airlines that specify that being barefoot is against their terms of carriage. “I have not seen all foreign based airlines’ contracts of carriage, but I have reviewed the ones from Aeroflot, Air Canada, Air France, Air New Zealand, British Airways, China Southern Airlines, Lufthansa, and Qantas. With the exception of Air Canada, none of these make any mention at all of bare feet or someone who is barefoot,” Kriss writes.
However, he says airports and planes are no places to argue with staff, given how seriously security is taken. From Kriss’s experience, most staff will allow you to board and fly barefoot, so long as you’re polite. Over a 20-year period, he took 114 flights without shoes on and was only asked to cover his feet eight times.