by Donald Wood
Last updated: 7:00 PM ET, Mon January 16, 2017
In an effort to combat a series of sexual assault allegations during flights, Air India has announced that it will offer female-only seating areas for women flying alone.
According to The Hindu, officials from Air India have announced that India's national carrier will offer the specialty seating for women at no additional cost on domestic flights during the initial rollout of the policy.
There will be six seats set aside in the third row of the economy class specifically for women who are traveling alone, Air India general manager Meenakshi Malik told The Hindu. The decision comes after two separate incidents involving women allegedly being groped.
"We feel, as national carriers, it is our responsibility to enhance comfort level to female passengers," Malik said in a statement. "There are a lot of female passengers who travel alone with us and we will be blocking a few seats for them."
In the first incident on Dec. 21, a female passenger sleeping on a flight from Mumbai to Newark, New Jersey, was allegedly groped by a 40-year-old male passenger. She reported the incident to the cabin crew and filed a complaint with United States authorities.
Just a few days later, an Air India flight attendant reported that a male passenger on a flight from Muscat to Delhi touched her inappropriately. Following the incidents, Air India added plastic handcuffs to its flights in order to detain passengers caught sexually assaulting others.
This isn't Air India's first run-in with issues regarding women's rights. In 2015, a total of 125 flight attendants-many of them women-were supposed to be grounded for being overweight.
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