Delta Air Lines Now Bans Flight Attendant With a Side Hustle On Social Media From Posting Photos in Uniform

Delta Air Lines has told flight attendants that they are no longer to post photos of themselves in uniform on popular social media sites like Instagram and TikTok if they have a side hustle as a paid influencer.

The updated social media policy has been designed to prevent flight attendants and other employees from ‘leveraging’ the Delta brand to build their presence on social media and score lucrative influencer deals.

The policy is not designed to prevent most employees from posting photos of themselves in uniform or documenting their working lives, but as soon as they start earning any money from their presence on social media, the photo ban will kick in.

Delta has a famously strict social media policy that can see employees terminated for bringing the airline’s brand into disrepute, even if workers don’t actively identify themselves as a Delta staffer, but the airline has allowed flight attendants to talk openly on social media about their jobs while in uniform.

A new trend of flight attendants taking to TikTok to share various details about their jobs and working days has become a popular niche on the video platform, but crew members will no longer be allowed to monetize their content once they have built up a substantial following.

In 2018, Delta was criticized for its “extensive” and “broadly written” social media policy that bars staffers from posting “inappropriate” content or material that “has the ability to harm Delta.”

Critics of the policy also claim it aimed to prevent Delta’s largely non-unionized workforce from discussing issues at work, saying that “pay, job duties, coworkers, issues with company policy, or general criticisms about Delta are best directed to your manager.”

In 2022, a Delta flight attendant sued the Atlanta-based airline for racial discrimination and retaliation after she was sacked for breaching its social media policy when she posted a cartoon of President Trump wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood on Facebook.

Leondra Taylor was a veteran flight attendant who had worked for Delta for 13 years and before then at Northwest Airlines until she was dismissed in April 2021 on the grounds that she had posted a racially motivated political post on social media.

Earlier this month, it was revealed that another ex-Delta flight attendant was suing the airline for retaliation after he spoke out on social media about a colleague who was accused of sexually assaulting him.

Aryasp Nejat used a fake profile on Facebook when he accused the colleague of using social media before posting on an internal message board that Delta had created a “hostile work environment” over its campaign to stop potential unionization.

Delta found out about Nejat’s Facebook post and suspended him without pay before terminating his employment.