Airline to allow women to choose to avoid sitting next to men on flights

Indian low-cost carrier IndiGo has become the first airline to allow women travellers to choose a seat next to another woman. With a proposed start date of August 2024, and initially on a trial basis, female travellers checking in online for their flights will be able to see which adjacent seats have been booked by other female passengers. Males will be able to see which seats are vacant, but not the gender of the occupant.

Indian budget airline will allow female passengers to select seats next to other women.Credit: Alamy

IndiGo operates more than 2000 domestic and international flights daily and the move comes as a result of the airline’s market research survey asking how travel could be made more comfortable for women. While the initiative received wide attention in India, it’s attracted little comment in Western media.

Women-only travel is nothing new in India. For many decades Indian women have been able to travel among other women. All the country’s long-distance trains services have women-only compartments. In Mumbai, India’s commercial dynamo, suburban commuter trains have compartments reserved for women.

Japan also has women-only railway carriages, while Iran has compartments restricted to women on its buses, trains and metro rail systems.

There’s no sign of any other airlines following IndiGo’s example, but it might catch on. Women travelling alone, squashed into an economy seat, are vulnerable, particularly on long flights.

Quite often the victim is an unaccompanied minor or a teenager, and too inexperienced, afraid or ashamed to call out the perpetrator. They might even try to convince themselves the contact was accidental. While some incidents – the groping hand that creeps under a blanket – are blatantly sexual, many fall into a grey area.

A man who brushes against a woman while shifting in his seat, “accidental” contact on the armrest, the bloke who won’t rise from his aisle seat when a woman wants to exit – impolite or something creepy – who’s to say?

In April, the FBI issued a warning that sexual assault on flights is on the rise, with 96 cases opened in the US last year.

India is hardly the only country where solo women travellers often feel threatened, eyeballed and the objects of unwelcome attention. No wonder some would prefer to sit among other women.

The FBI’s recommended precautions:

• Offenders will often test their victims, sometimes pretending to brush against them to see how they react or if they wake up. If such behaviour occurs, establish boundaries, and consider asking to be moved to another seat.
• If your seatmate is a stranger, no matter how polite he or she may seem, keep the armrest between you down.
• If you are arranging for a child to fly unaccompanied, try to reserve an aisle seat so flight attendants can keep a closer watch on them. Minors are known targets.
• If an incident happens, report it immediately to the flight crew and ask that they record the attacker’s identity and report the incident. They can alert law enforcement, if necessary.