By Whitney
Having traveled from Oakland to Chicago to meet up with women who had traveled from all over the country to be at the BlogHer ’09 conference, early conversations were filled with travel-related stories. As I sipped my drink and chatted with the lovely Susan Wagner, she asked me why I had been evacuated from the airport, a surprising status update she had read on my Facebook page earlier that day. (I still did not know, but I assured her that it had been a calm and quick evacuation and that we easily flowed back through the security lines and made it to our gate on time.) I asked her why she, a fashion blogger, had written last week that flip-flops on an airplane are a no-no.
“Is it because it’s yucky to expose your fellow travelers to your bare toes?” I asked, thinking of all the stylish open-toed shoes women wear on their way to warm climates via airplane.
No, Susan assured me, it’s not a yucky factor.
And then she reminded me of the airplane that emergency landed this year into the Hudson River, forcing passengers to deplane atop the wing of the aircraft. Imagine having been on that plane and stepping out onto the moist fiberglass wing, inches above the freezing river. I’ll bet we’d all wish that when we looked down at our feet at that moment, we’d find that we smartly wore our closed-toed rubber-soled waterproof boots.
(via bbc/cnn)
Ok, not realistic? I get it. We’re not going to do all our air travel in hiking boots for worst-case scenario purposes.
So how about a compromise? A shoe that protects your foot and has a decent grip is simply a sensible choice for the plane.
Whether you are navigating through a crowd of panicked airport evacuees who are haphazardly navigating wheelie bags over your feet or – less likely, but worse – having to traverse unexpected terrain as part of an escape plan, we’d all be better off in something other than flip-flops. Even if we’re headed for the beach.
