Tampa International Airport said on social media Thursday (local time) that it wanted to ban people from wearing pyjamas at the Florida facility. No, it wasn't being serious.
A post on the airport's official X account said that after successfully going “Crocs-free”, Tampa International had “seen enough” of pyjamas.
“The madness stops today. The movement starts now,” reads the post, which had been viewed 5.7 million times by mid-afternoon Eastern time and generated a debate about airport attire in the comments.
Beau Zimmer, an airport spokesperson, told The Associated Press the post was part of the airport’s longstanding social media persona — a tongue-in-cheek voice it has cultivated since its early days on Twitter, before the platform rebranded as X. The account has attracted a loyal global following, he said.
“Our regular social media followers just eat this stuff up," Zimmer said. "But obviously this is all in fun, and we encourage our travellers to be comfortable.”
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who has been encouraging travellers to dress up when they fly, reacted to the post with a GIF of actor John Krasinski from the TV show The Office looking into the camera and saying, “Yes!”
The airport released a statement Thursday clarifying its post was intended as a joke.
“Today’s post about ‘banning’ pyjamas was another playful nod to day-of-travel fashion debates," it said. "We encourage our passengers to travel comfortably and appreciate our loyal followers who enjoy the online humour.”
Zimmer said the airport's online personality has been around for at least a decade. In the earlier days of what was then Twitter, a young intern started posting light-hearted jokes, like poking fun at rival sports teams and fans, “and it really took off”.
Earlier this month, the day after the Tampa Bay Lightning rallied from a four-goal deficit to beat the Boston Bruins 6-5 in an NHL Stadium Series game in Tampa, the airport shared on X: “Oh, and safe flight home to all the Bruins fans today :)”
Last month, alluding to an ongoing joke about passengers mixing up the airport's code of TPA with TIA, an airport in Albania, the Tampa airport shared a New Year's resolution “to stress out less.”
“Unfortunately," the post continued, "some of y'all's resolutions are to continue calling us TIA so we will not be meeting our goal.”
One X user responded that Tampa airport should just change its code to "GOAT so people don't get confused,” referring to the acronym for “greatest of all time”.
“We put out these fun posts with the hope that when we have something critical or really important to say, people will listen,” Zimmer said. When they announce new international routes, for example, “and we've got this huge following of people who are looking out for our posts, it's really effective”.
In New Zealand, Dunedin Airport was the topic of a similar debate about airport conduct when it introduced a three-minute time limit on hugs in 2024.
Unlike Tampa, it was no joke as the time limit was introduced to improve traffic flow and safety near the terminal's free drop-off zone.
It made international headlines; some called it "quirky", while others dubbed the rule "inhumane"
- Additional reporting by 1News
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