“Great initiative”: Airline's world first move to make female travellers safer
A popular airline has introduced a new measure to help female travellers feel safer on their journey.
IndiGo will make the change in August, giving female travellers the option to choose not to sit next to a man on their flight.
Prior to booking, women will be able to check the gender of the flyer sitting next to them and select if they don't want a male seat mate.
However, this change will not apply to men, as male travellers will not be shown the gender of their seat mate when making a booking and instead will only be able to view available seats.
The low-cost carrier is a codeshare partner of Qantas, and Australian passengers travel on-board its planes for destinations such as India, as well as within the country.
The idea for the change came from an IndiGo survey where the airline asked females what would make travel more comfortable, and many said they would feel safer to have more power over who they spent their journey sitting next to.
“IndiGo is proud to announce the introduction of a new feature that aims to make the travel experience more comfortable for our female passengers,” the airline said.
“We are committed to providing an unparalleled travel experience for all our passengers, and this new feature is just one of the many steps we are taking towards achieving that goal.”
There has been a mixed reaction on social media to to IndiGo’s attempt to make female flyers feel safer, as one commenter wrote on X: “Why can’t they allocate left side for one gender and right side for another gender?"
There was also concern about how the good seats could be snapped up, writing, “Almost all seats available will be the middle ones”.
Meanwhile a man protested, “What if I don’t want to sit by her? It works both ways”, while many simply praised it as a “great initiative”.
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