{"id":172397,"date":"2026-02-28T03:15:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T03:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/172397\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T03:15:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T03:15:22","slug":"tampa-international-airport-clarifies-that-banning-pajamas-was-a-joke-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/172397\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa International Airport clarifies that banning pajamas was a joke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">(AP) &#8211; Tampa International Airport said on social media Thursday that it wanted to ban people from wearing pajamas at the Florida facility. No, it wasn\u2019t being serious.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">A post on the airport\u2019s official X account said that after successfully going \u201cCrocs-free,\u201d Tampa International had \u201cseen enough\u201d of pajamas.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"A passenger carries her luggage through a nearly deserted terminal at the Tampa International...\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772248522_549_DJ2WB4TPKJCBZBNFCNONEYPQSE.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"653\" \/>A passenger carries her luggage through a nearly deserted terminal at the Tampa International Airport Friday, April 24, 2020, in Tampa, Fla. Business at the airport has been at a near standstill due to the coronavirus outbreak.(Chris O&#8217;Meara | AP Photo\/Chris O&#8217;Meara)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe madness stops today. The movement starts now,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Beau Zimmer, an airport spokesperson, told The Associated Press the post was part of the airport\u2019s longstanding social media persona \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cOur regular social media followers just eat this stuff up,\u201d Zimmer said. \u201dBut obviously this is all in fun, and we encourage our travelers to be comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reacted to the post with a GIF of actor John Krasinski from the TV show \u201cThe Office\u201d looking into the camera and saying, \u201cYes!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Duffy has been encouraging passengers to dress more formally while flying, part of a civility campaign he launched last November \u2014 called \u201cthe Golden Age of Travel Starts with You.\u201d The Transportation Department said the campaign was \u201cintended to jumpstart a nationwide conversation around how we can all restore courtesy and class to air travel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The airport released a statement Thursday clarifying its post was intended as a joke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cToday\u2019s post about \u2018banning\u2019 pajamas was another playful nod to day-of-travel fashion debates,\u201d it said. \u201dWe encourage our passengers to travel comfortably and appreciate our loyal followers who enjoy the online humor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Zimmer said the airport\u2019s 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, \u201cand it really took off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">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: \u201cOh, and safe flight home to all the Bruins fans today :)\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Last month, alluding to an ongoing joke about passengers mixing up the airport\u2019s code of TPA with TIA, an airport in Albania, the Tampa airport shared a New Year\u2019s resolution \u201cto stress out less.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cUnfortunately,\u201d the post continued, \u201dsome of y\u2019all\u2019s resolutions is to continue calling us TIA so we will not be meeting our goal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">One X user responded that Tampa airport should just change its code to \u201cGOAT so people don\u2019t get confused,\u201d referring to the acronym for \u201cgreatest of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AP) &#8211; Tampa International Airport said on social media Thursday that it wanted to ban people from wearing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[6731,72389,81849,81845,81843,81844,81092,81316,81846,81847,135,137,3210,136,81848],"class_list":{"0":"post-172397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-airport","9":"tag-banned","10":"tag-banning","11":"tag-banning-crocs","12":"tag-banning-pajamas","13":"tag-banning-pjs","14":"tag-crocs","15":"tag-joke","16":"tag-pajamas-at-the-airport","17":"tag-pjs-at-the-airport","18":"tag-tampa","19":"tag-tampa-headlines","20":"tag-tampa-international-airport","21":"tag-tampa-news","22":"tag-wearing-pajamas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}