India's largest budget carrier appears ready to make permanent a trial that allows women to pick seats beside other female passengers. IndiGo officials say they've had good feedback on a program that shows women passengers a different seating map than the map accessible to men. Females who book (the airline requires passengers to state their gender to book a flight) see a map that colors available seats pink if they are next to another woman. Male passengers get the regular androgynous seat map.
Choosing seating on a budget airline in India? “I don’t know where I’ll be then, Doc,” he said, “but it won’t smell too good, that’s for sure.” -Airplane
I never thought this was a problem until I had a daughter. She’s had all manner of creepy interactions with creepy men. Until we protect our daughters better, every little improvement we can make in their security is a good thing.
How long is it going to take for men to realize that mysteriously blocked seats are likely to be occupied by women and to select an adjacent seat?
Unless the airline has a dedicated “Women Only” section of the cabin, there is no way to prevent some men from sitting next to some women.
SSOBOL: Women see a color coded seating chart where seats already taken by women are pink - those taken by men will be gray. However, men will see a non color-coded seating chart so they will have no idea which seats have been taken by a woman. Accordingly, men will have no way of knowing if they are reserving a seat next to a woman - or not.
Seeing the marketing advantage, all other airlines quickly adopted the IndiGo software into their booking process. No mention was made on changing core software or its interfaces. An industry spokesman was quoted as saying “All passengers world wide are demanding that they have the exact same choice as was being wanted by female passengers in India”.