India’s largest budget carrier, IndiGo, is the first airline to trial a feature that lets female passengers book seats next to other women to avoid sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a man in a move designed to make flying more comfortable for female passengers, according to a CNBC report.
The airline’s booking process is fairly standard except for the seat map which highlights seats occupied by women with the color pink. This information is not visible to male passengers, according to the airline, CNBC reported. IndiGo did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment on the new feature.
I wish this existed but for avoiding having to sit near children.
Unfortunately, kids can’t go in the cargo hold. Something about needing air and warmth.
Overhead?
Restraints and a gag
The cargo holds on commercial flights are pressurized and heated. I can’t imagine passengers would take kindly to their luggage being subjected to 0.3x atmospheric pressure at -55°C.
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Just poke some air holes in the overhead cabin, bingo.
They could, the cargo hold is pressurized, if you fly with animals like a dog, they go in the cargo hold too. Just dont forget to give them something to eat on long flights
Yeah, sorry about that.
Edit: actually though, I wouldn’t mind being seated in something like a “family” section. It really is hard to keep babies and toddlers still and quiet on a plane (or anywhere), and I always feel bad for the people sitting next to us.
I recently discovered movie theaters for kids and it’s turned it back into a fun experience for me.
You’d have to get airlines to treat people like something more than money making sardines before they will give you a family section.
Empty seats in that section they only view as lost money and really don’t care about your experience flying
It doesn’t help when airlines split people up for not paying the “don’t get split all over the fucking plane” charge.
Then you end up with kids running between parents and standing all over people.
Honestly fuck airlines for making basic things an optional extra. It costs them literally nothing to sit a family all together.
Every time I book a flight I get so mad because there are so many little things that are up charges that should be default.
You mean you want to take bags? And you want to sit down?
You want the bloody moon on a stick, you!
I rather have a toddler continously kick my seat on a long haul flight than dealing with a overly “friendly” and intrusive guy who thinks its his right to bother me for 12 hours because I’m stuck there.
Would definitely pay extra for this.
Do Indian men have a reputation for being inappropriately forward with women? There was a meme that read “every app is a dating app if you’re Indian enough”
“Inappropriately forward” is a very polite way to put it. I feel like at least once a month there’s a new story out of India about a gang rape or something.
To be fair India has the biggest population on earth, like 5+ times US population. Per capita statistics would be more interesting here.
With a topic as sensitive and biased against the victims as this, it’s hard to get accurate data - see https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rape-statistics-by-country
As far as I know, yes. The Internet has taught me to not bring a woman with me if I ever go to the Holi festival in India. I’ve never been to India, I hope the internet is wrong but I had an Indian coworker who told me the same thing.
You could look up the gulabi gang. It’s a group of women who fight to protect other women from violence.
Edit - I think it’s best if we listen to Indian women speak on the problem. The first time I heard about the gulabi gang and why they exist I was horrified.
I don’t think that’s an Indian men thing, I think that’s a predatory men around the world thing.
Indian culture is especially sexiest and repressive.
Others commented about misogyny etc. in India miss the fact that India is (a) not a monolith & (b) flights are too expensive for 80% of India’s population (yes, wealth disparity in India is that bad). So the men on flights are less likely to grope women than let’s say a man on a train.
I asked my Indian colleagues about this, and they said they’d use this preference for space (not purely safety). One of them also said men smell worse than women so she’d prefer a woman next to her.
Yes.
Do Indian men have a reputation for being inappropriately forward with women?
That’s a very friendly description of their reputation.
I’ve been on long flights where I wished there had been designated seating for introverts. But then I considered the implications of packing all the extroverts together in one place nearby and thought better of it.
So basically introvert are like the Boron control rods inserted into the crowd to prevent the extroverts from going critical.
Nice. I had been using the analogy that an introvert at a party acts as a sacrificial anode consuming corrosive extroversion until they are utterly exhausted. But I like your take on it!
I don’t see the issue here. Most other indian transport has female sections. That is a normal part of public transportation there.
They do not “segregate”. Its not like the whole plane is split into male and female zones. They just saying “Hey, if you feel more comfortable sitting with women, we got you.”
I would probably not chose it on purpose, but i can see, how it can be a more relaxed experience for other women.
I also imagine for some women, the idea of getting plunked in a middle seat between two potentially creepy guys is a source of anxiety.
Not to sure(feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), but afaik Theres a quite big amount of rapes and sexual assaults happening in India so not being forced to sit next to a creep may be a good thing.
I would rather not sit next to a fat person if i had the choice
Sorry bro :(
If the seats had more space like they used to a long time ago, nobody would care. I blame the airlines.
You can apply thus logic 90% of bullsbit we face on daily but people preferto chimp out at each other instead of you know… The megacorps and their owners who treat working people as property and customers as brain dead idiots
Everything going ok India?
TBH even as a man I’d prefer to sit not with other men. They are bigger, for one thing. And overall less considerate, though of course they have no monopoly on that.
Though I’m sure the women wouldn’t want to sit near a man who wants to sit with women lol
I want seats next to nobody. How hard will that be to pull off?
I want seats next to nobody. How hard will that be to pull off?
Just be a man on a flight full of women.
(No snark intended there - I’m neither a danger to any woman I sit next to, NOR offended if no women sit next to a strange man (me) they don’t know on a flight - but I definitely see an upside where maybe in some circumstances I get an empty seat next to me that I would not have had.)
Okay but then men are allowed to fart openly and take our shirts off in the no-women section while they drink chamomile tea and read thought provoking books about how they are okay just the way they are.
Are men allowed to buy a ticket to not sit around nude farting men
Yes, it’s called business. They fart fully clothed.
No. It’s a rite of passage.
You can have that, but only if you let the women take their shirts off and fart openly too.
Me I don’t want to sit next to a republican.
Wake up babe, India mentioned on lemmy
only 5 more years before they’re a Lemmywide superpower
The airline’s booking process is fairly standard except for the seat map which highlights seats occupied by women with the color pink. This information is not visible to male passengers, according to the airline, CNBC reported.
What’s to stop a man from claiming to be female to see the map of where women are sitting, and then booking an adjacent seat themselves?
They probably need to sign in to book, and required their data to be accurate to board.
On Indian flights you can pay to choose your seat or let the operator choose for you for free. I suspect the latter is where the preference choice comes in. So there won’t be a question of seeing where women are sitting.
You pick your seat after the booking process, where you have to enter your details which does include sex. Even if you enter it wrong just to pick a seat you won’t be able to enter the airport because they check that at the gate. Whether you are the same person whose ticket you are carrying.
I was thinking first would be the fake booking to find where the women were sitting, then switch browsers/clear cookies/whatever and book with the real details.
Yes but men wouldn’t be able to book those seats unless all the other seats are taken.
At least that is what happens on the bus seats here.
Oh I see - yes, if the seats around the women are automatically reserved then that exploit doesn’t work.
I’d assume Indian airlines has an ID check,l and men aren’t going to get a surgery and go through the process of changing their legal gender just to creep on women. This is also the same argument used against trans people in the bathroom debate, and while you probably didn’t mean to, you are parroting the ideas of transphobes.
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The return of smoking and non-smoking sections.
I mean I don’t want to sit next to a man either, for some reason they tend to be offensive even if they don’t feel like they have to talk to me for some reason. I also don’t really want to sit next to anyone because it feels akward trying not to make eye contact or feeling like I have to say somehing. Most of all though no kicking children behind me. Fuck just introduce boxed in seats so I can fly in silence and solitude. Or don’t, I probably can’t afford travel for the rest of my life.
It already exists. Business class.
What do you mean by offensive?
2 times had different guys that smelled weirdly like literal shit, one time ranting about dumb maga shit like he thought he could convert me, the other one just being all around invasive and reaching over me to point both air things at him and adjust the window multiple times without asking.
I’ve had the exact opposite experience. Every woman I’ve sat next to had way too much perfume, couldn’t sit still, constantly in and out of their purse, and violently flipping through their phone and sighing heavily every 5 minutes because there was no internet. 🤷♂️
That said, no one I’ve sat next to in a 3-seat aisle knows the proper ownership of armrests.
That sounds just as bad as dudes with unwiped asses and evangelical MAGAs intruding your personal space! Poor you /s
It’s really sad that it’s come to this, it’s really bad over there just like here.
