These incidents are not unusual; in fact, they happen all
too often. The headlines read like this: “Sleeping Women Wakes Up to Passenger
Groping Her on a Flight to XX.”
It happened to me early in the early aughts on a Royal
Jordanian flight from New York to Amman. The seat row was in the back of the
Economy Plus section. The seatmate was an air marshal. I knew this because I
saw the pistol he packed in his carry-on bag. I did not report the incident,
and when I visibly awoke, we chatted as if it had never happened. I chose not
to make a scene on that very long flight. I decided not to let him know that I
knew what he had done.
Perhaps it was the wrong choice. These incidents are much
too common for one person to change the tide, I felt. It would take a world of
attention and new seating policies to make a difference.
And one airline is doing just that. Air India offers a
female-only row for its seating choices, at least on domestic flights. The move
came in response to an ongoing battery of groping incidents that were being
reported.
“We will be reserving the third row — six seats — in the
economy class of the aircraft for female passengers traveling alone,” Meenakshi
Malik, Air India’s revenue management chief, told The Hindu newspaper of India,
as reported in USA Today. “We feel, as national carriers, it is our
responsibility to enhance comfort level to female passengers. There are a lot
of female passengers who travel alone with us and we will be blocking a few
seats for them.”The women-only seats do not come at an added cost and can be
requested up to an hour before check-in.
In a recent move, the carrier started offering
“gender-sensitive” seating to women traveling solo so they will not have to sit
in a middle seat – especially between two adult males. On average, 10 percent
of the passenger load on an Air India flight will be solo women. The move is to
make women flying alone and mothers with children feel more comfortable during
the flight.
“To ensure the female guests travelling with us have a
comfortable flight, we, as a company, are adopting a gender-sensitive seat
assignment practice. A circular has been released with regards to the same,”
stated an internal communication last month, according to the Hindustan Times.
India has long had a policy of offering women “safety”
compartments on transport. Long-distance train trips come with “Ladies Cars” as
a “gender sensitive” convenience. Each metro train in Delhi has such a section
for women. Other airlines, such as British Airways, Qantas, Air New Zealand,
and Virgin Australia, have created policies that do not allow unaccompanied
children to be seated next to adult males on flights.
Unfortunately, however, those carriers are few and far
between, and the occurrences of women – and underage girls – experiencing
unsettling groping incidents are still playing out on other airlines. In
September, for instance, on an IndiGo flight from Mumbai to Guwahati, a male
passenger allegedly groped the adjacent female co-passenger after lifting the
armrest.
A federal lawsuit was launched in July against Delta that
accused flight attendants of failing to intervene after an inebriated male
passenger groped a mother and her 16-year-old daughter. Similar stories
surround everyday carriers like Alaska, Spirit, JetBlue and United.
In one incident reported in March, an accused Delta
passenger blamed poor eyesight for the misbehavior. During another occasion
last year, it was “the Ambien” that caused it.
“Delta continues to cooperate with law enforcement in this
matter,” a Delta spokesperson told a reporter. “We have zero tolerance for this
type of alleged behavior on our flights and at our airports and the charged
individual is no longer welcome to fly Delta.”
That American carriers will see “gender-sensitive” seat
policies or ladies' rows on planes any time soon, however, is likely not on the
horizon.
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