IndiGo, which is India’s largest airline, is trialing a new concept that’s intended to make female passengers feel more at ease, as flagged by Live from a Lounge.
IndiGo’s new feature for female passengers
Thanks to a new feature that has just been rolled out, female IndiGo passengers can now know in advance if they’ll be sitting next to another female or not. The way this works, when a female passengers is on a booking, the online check-in process will show a seat map that indicates which seats are occupied by females.
This is only available during online check-in, and not at the time of booking, so you won’t see this more than 48 hours in advance (or else creepy male passengers could do searches to try and find a seat next to a female). This indicator will display as long as there’s a female on the reservation, so you could see this if you have an itinerary with both a male and female traveling together.
As the airline describes it, this is intended to make the travel experience more comfortable for female passengers, and has been introduced based on market research. The airline also states that this aligns with the company’s “girl power ethos.”
IndiGo is the largest airline to have done something like this, but not the first. India’s Vistara has used a similar concept, referred to as Vistara WomanFlyer.
Is this a thoughtful change, or silly?
India seems to have a fair number of issues that cause some female passengers to be uncomfortable onboard planes, when seated next to certain male passengers. I mean, heck, every so often we see stories in the United States as well, about passengers making unwanted advances on others. So I suppose it’s hardly unique to India.
In theory this seems like a thoughtful feature, and I think some female passengers will appreciate this. That being said, there will be situations where last minute seat or itinerary changes cause a passenger to think that they’ll be seated next to a female, only for that to not end up being a thing. Furthermore, if someone is creepy enough and willing to pay, there’s nothing stopping a male passenger from booking a ticket for a made up female, just to see the seat map.
I don’t think we’d ever see anything like this in the United States, but in India it seems generally more acceptable to make special accommodations for females, in light of how creepy some men are.
Bottom line
India’s largest airline has added a feature whereby female passengers can see at check-in which seats are reserved by fellow female travelers (and by process of elimination, which are reserved by men). IndiGo isn’t the first airline in India to do something like this, but it is the biggest.
What do you make of IndiGo’s female seat map feature?
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