IndiGo, India’s largest budget airline, has added a new seat choice feature on its booking site, allowing female passengers to avoid sitting next to male passengers on flights.
RELATED STORIES: Delta Airlines Under Investigation Over Passenger Protection Policies As It Continues Struggling To Recover After Global Tech Outage, Unable To Find Pilots And Flight Attendants
The feature on the airline’s website displays a pink seat icon on the seat selection page, indicating that a female passenger occupies a specific seat. The visual cue is exclusive to female travelers, ensuring male passengers do not have access to this information, as reported by CNBC . While booking tickets, travelers on IndiGo must specify their gender, enabling the airline to manage the visibility of seat selection details. The initiative was launched on a trial basis in May, and now the service is available on all IndiGo flights.
“IndiGo is proud to announce the introduction of a new feature that aims to make the travel experience more comfortable for our female passengers. This has been introduced based on market research, and is currently in pilot mode aligning with our #GirlPower ethos.”
CEO Pieter Elbers said that the latest feature has garnered positive reactions on social media, “Technology is enabling some things which were not possible in the past.” The main goal for the airline is to make flying more comfortable for female passengers, as many women have shared their stories of instances where they felt uncomfortable when traveling alone. However, there has been some criticism, such as bringing up how the airline will handle cases where men identify as women. Others stated that they believe the feature is discriminatory and sexist.
RELATED STORIES: Breaking: Widespread Technology Outage Disrupts Banks, Media Outlets, Companies, And Forces Airlines To Ground Flights Worldwide
“Reminds me of school days when girls would be seated together in one row and boys in another. Why dont you improve your customer service instead of giving this weird biased option to women. And sitting besides another woman isnt necessarily peaceful, they can be irritating too!” one user wrote on X( formerly Twitter).
The outlet also referenced several incidents on airlines involving male and female passengers, which include a man touching a female passenger inappropriately on an IndiGo flight from Mumbai to Guwahati in September 2023. A similar incident involved a 39-year-old Indian national and a Singapore permanent resident who was sentenced to four months in jail in 2019 for harassing a 22-year-old flight attendant during a flight from Cochin to Singapore.
Most Popular
Comments / 0