Pilots have this tiny detail on their uniform that you probably never noticed — here's what it's for

New York Post

20-05-2025

A pilot revealed the big meaning behind a small detail on their uniform.
While flight attendants have their own designated uniforms, obviously so do pilots.
And if you've ever taken a good look at a pilot when boarding a flight, you may have noticed that some of them have small gold stripes on their white-collared shirts — and there's a good reason for that.
An Emirates pilot explained in a TikTok video posted by the airline that a pilot's epaulettes, or sometimes referred to as shoulder boards, indicate their rank.
'One bar is for a training pilot, two bars are for a first officer, three bars are for senior first officers and four bars are for captains, like me,' the proud Emirates aircrew explained.
One of the commenters on the video said, 'Airlines mostly have slightly different rules regarding this.' And there is some truth to that.
According to the flight training center, AeroGuard, 'Depending on the airline, two, three or four stripes are shown on a pilots' shoulders.'
'A flight engineer or second officer wears two stripes, a first officer wears three stripes on their pilot uniform and a captain normally wears four,' as explained on their site — which differs from Emirates' pilot rankings.
When it comes to those in charge of flying planes — people are not only checking out their uniforms, they're also flirting with them.
A 25-year-old woman named Tanya Pidgorodetskiy shared her chance encounter with a handsome pilot while she was flying home to Cleveland with her family in a series of TikTok videos.
'Every time I tell the story, people think I'm making it up,' Pidgorodetskiy captioned one of her clips.
The pilot caught Pidgorodetskiy's attention when she was waiting to board a Frontier flight. She originally thought the good-looking stranger was going to be flying the flight she was soon getting on — but it turned out he was off-duty in uniform, flying as a passenger like everyone else.
The two didn't interact on the flight but he did leave a sweet note when it was time to deplane.
'I was sitting in a row towards the back, and 20 minutes before landing, I got a tap on my shoulder, and it's that guy, and he handed me a napkin, and I was just so confused,' Pidgorodetskiy said in her video. 'I made my mom and my sister read it first. I was freaking out.'
'Hi, I'm sure you get notes like this all the time, but I would love to take you out to dinner and get to know you. If that's something you'd be up for, let me know,' the sweet note from the pilot read.
And long story short — the two lovebirds have been dating ever since.