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.
deleted by creator
They put dogs down there.
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.
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
I recently discovered movie theaters for kids and it’s turned it back into a fun experience for me.
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.
Or us fatties.
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
Have you like, ignored every second piece of information coming out of india the last decades?
They have a terrible issue with misogyny, there are countless stories of rape and other forms of assault on any kind of women (and girls). Indians, foreigners, none are safe, even with men accompanying them for protection. One or two guys can’t do much against a rape mob.
India is probably the first country I would warn a woman away from if she were looking for vacation destinations. Followed by islamic countries.
My wife got invited to a wedding in India and I was not invited (long story). She asked the bride if it was safe to travel to the wedding alone and she straight up said “No. You should find a travel buddy.”
Mm idk about that. Yes there is a lot of violence against women in India. Generally, the Indians flying are not gonna be the ones doing that. Secondly, there is a lot of violence against women all over the world, it’s not just an India thing. Hell half the US political system is trying to give women the death penalty for the consequences of being raped. Or just for deciding they don’t want kids.
Not denying violence against women is an issue elsewhere too, but you would be hard pressed to find such a staggering density of sexual violence, in rather public areas, committed by groups of men for little to no provocation other than a woman being in the wrong place.
Now I am not saying all Indian men are rapists of course, but there certainly is evidence of a system wide, cultural aspect creating and enabling this behavior in a way rarely seen elsewhere.
So help you if you’re a lady who wants to be out after 6PM in UP or South Delhi… RIP Jyoti
Yeah I mean I can agree with the second paragraph for sure
I dont know the statistics off the top of my head, I’m just wondering how it measures up considering the number of people
But you’re right. Especially considering what’s just happened this week
Yeah my sister went to India a few years back by herself and while thankfully nothing terrible happened to her, she said she would never go back. Just walking around she said the streets are majority men and they are not shy about staring at any woman (especially someone who was clearly a foreigner). Of course, parts of the trip were cool but definitely not the place to be travelling alone as a woman.
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.
As an Indian I’ll say yes, but the people who can afford flights aren’t normally the type of people who do that.
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.
“They do not segregate, all they do is segregate”
This meant IndiGo Air and their new seating policy.
You don’t have to make a fundamental discussion about it on how you perceive and generalised indian society.
How about “we let private companies segregate in whichever ways they want!”?
SINCE WHEN IS CREATING SAVE SPACES FOR WOMEN “SEGREGATION”??!!!
India is a country where you have to be careful not to look directly at men on the streets! Not to mention when you can’t move away for hours.
Sometimes I find the rampant Misogyny on lemmy really disturbing.
Yes but I find all this both racist and sexist. Not all men in India are creeps, even if may be a rampant problem. Shouldn’t they instead try to punish the weirdos?
Of course and in an ideal world we wouldn’t need save spaces for women. But we don’t live in an ideal world and while not all men are creeps, still too many are.
I don’t think I don’t know any woman who wasn’t at some point in her life sexually harrased and/or assaulted. All over the world. And as long as the situation is like that, people like you, who feel offended or “segregated” by female safe spaces are part of the problem.
Yes you, crying “Not all meennn” are part of the problem and why the world isn’t safer for women.
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?
Honestly I think in most cases segregation is just not the answer.
The more far away we become based on fairly arbitrary characteristics, the less there is opportunity for a meaningful dialogue that would change the status quo around the issue.
On a practical side, I wish there were proper passenger safety measures and procedures against harassment. A man is trying to do that to you? Record it and report to the crew immediately, and let them deal with the perpetrator and call police on the ground when applicable.
deleted by creator
You put it into words perfectly. Thank you.
My concern is that the same men, frustrated at being unable to do this on flight, will do it somewhere else anyway. Also, some could be pissed off by this measure just enough to have a negative shift in mentality towards women (see incels that are driven by alientation). So does it really significantly reduce harm? I’d love to see numbers if anyone has got them.
deleted by creator
I’m saying those particular men who find assaulting women acceptable find it acceptable everywhere, on a plane or outside. Or should we isolate women from men in all spheres of life? This in itself can’t be the solution. Also, alienation that comes with such segregation is a common driver for violence, and I’d love to see how it might translate to more abusive sexual behavior, too. I don’t have the numbers, and would love to see if someone does.
The rest is your emotional outburst. I hate to see Lemmy going in this direction and I hoped we won’t have this bullshit here. Try to understand another person’s take first and judge later, not the other way around. And don’t make it personal, this immediately degrades the conversation.
deleted by creator
I never defended sexual assault; I just said that:
If allowing women to avoid being seated next to men on flights reduces the chance of sexual assault from taking place
Is a big “if”. In your original sentence, on the plane, yes, it might reduce the risk of assault. But life doesn’t end outside the plane, and I wonder whether such restriction could just lead to increased risk of sexual assault elsewhere, due to a)frustration of the same men who didn’t do it on the plane and can probably still do it in any other place; b)influence of such measures on how abusive men treat the status quo and resist it - thereby negating all the benefit.
Which is why, if you feel my take “sounds” like something, I ask to clarify first and attack later. This is not a ragebait dumpster, and people are generally acting in good faith around Lemmy.
deleted by creator
This is a terrible take.
I think that it’s not always just about harassment, but sometimes just wanting to be left alone?
Buy entire row! Wtf
This
What you’re describing is a big hassle, and at the end of the day a confrontation and poor customer experience still happened making that customer think twice before flying again.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wake up babe, India mentioned on lemmy
only 5 more years before they’re a Lemmywide superpower
CBS News - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for CBS News:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/indigo-tests-feature-that-lets-women-book-seats-away-from-men/
The return of smoking and non-smoking sections.
The next feature they are adding is allowing female passengers to sit closer to any bears on the flight.
