At last, an airline that lets women avoid sitting next to men

Sex-segregated plane cabins? What fundamentalist nonsense is this? That was my first reaction to the news that IndiGo has become the world’s first airline to introduce such a concept. The budget carrier – one of India’s largest, responsible for 100 million journeys per year – from this month enables female customers to see the gender of their fellow passengers when booking seats so that they can avoid being allocated next to men if they choose.

Men won’t be afforded the same privilege. Isn’t that sexism, too?

Upon reflection, however, I think it’s a great idea – though I’m not sure why they’ve stopped there. I’d like the option to not be wedged next to children, obese travellers or anyone with a proclivity towards small talk.

IndiGo launched its new seating initiative in response to a customer survey into the aspects of flying that could be improved, and I’m not surprised that plenty of women raised complaints over lecherous men. Unwanted advances, no matter how polite, are awkward enough to field in a traditional social setting – at a bar, say – where one can at least just walk away. Being strapped in, thigh-to-thigh, beside a persistent flirt (or worse, a groper) is another matter entirely.

Figures on exactly how prevalent a problem this is are hard to come by, in part because of how seldom cases are formally reported. But in the US, a recent inquest found that in-flight sexual assaults in the US tripled over five years, prompting an FBI investigation. Just this month, a lawsuit was filed against Southwest Airlines after a 16-year-old boy was assaulted by a registered paedophile on a flight from San Diego to Portland. The American carrier is being blamed for failing to protect the victim because of its unpopular non-assigned seating policy, meaning children are often separated from their parents and end up next to strangers.

Anecdotally, most of the women I asked had at least one tale to share about inappropriate conduct from a man on a plane. I, myself, was kissed squarely on the lips by a middle-aged lesbian upon landing in Australia in my late teens. “Sorry!” she giggled, having chatted to me enthusiastically (platonically, I assumed) for the duration of the flight, “I just had to!” It remains one of the most bizarre moments I have ever experienced. I recall other passengers looking flabbergasted. Had she been male, it would no doubt have been taken more seriously.

Quite why certain people are so emboldened to throw themselves at their fellow travellers within the confines of a plane cabin is an interesting topic. There seems to be a sense of lawlessness that takes over at 35,000 feet; where people take off their shoes, knock back booze at any time of day or night and fart with reckless abandon. You’re also far more likely to cry on a plane, especially when you’re alone – the phenomenon of the “mile cry club” – which some social scientists put down to “stranger intimacy”.

GP Dr Nick Knight, who has a special interest in lifestyle medicine, says: “You’re in an unfamiliar environment, at altitude, away from your comforts of everyday life, surrounded by strangers. Sprinkle in your likely altered human physiology with lower air pressures and oxygen levels and your body and mind go into emotional lability.”