Virgin Atlantic have begun to allow their cabin crews to display their tattoos. This has made them the first British airline to relax this workplace restriction.

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Virgin Atlantic has decided to be more flexible when it comes to employee's body art. With the airline, and whole industry, scrambling to recruit more and more staff to fill operational roles, it seems that Virgin Atlantic is hoping that this move will give them an edge when hiring staff.

The company's Chief Peoples Officer (CPO) Estelle Hollingsworth commented: "At Virgin Atlantic, we want everyone to be themselves and know that they belong. Many people use tattoos to express their unique identities and our customer-facing and uniformed colleagues should not be excluded from doing so if they choose."That's why, in line with our focus on inclusion and championing individuality, we're relaxing our tattoo restrictions for all our people.

We're proud to be the airline that sees the world differently and allows our people to truly be themselves. "Face and neck tattoos will remain banned for flight attendants at the moment, however, the company is in talks about relaxing this in the future. Tattoos which contain swearing or culturally inappropriate ideas for example: nudity, violence, alcohol, and drugs are still strictly prohibited.

The same rules apply for prison-style, gang, and love or hate knuckle tattoos.The airline will allow crew with full-arm sleeve tattoos to wear the standard short-sleeved shirts while they are on duty. Furthermore, tattoos on legs and wrists will no longer need to be concealed with the use of makeup.Virgin Atlantic are not strangers to changing up their policies. The British carrier were one of the first airlines to begin relaxing strict makeup rules for crew members back in 2019. Additionally, they started to provide trousers and flat shoes as part of the standard female flight attendant uniform, moving away from the tradition of only allowing skirts and high heeled shoes.