SOCIAL DISTANCING ON AIRCRAFT

POST DEREKVH

We are seeing some examples of airlines leaving the middle seat empty, but I would be more concerned about someone coughing or sneezing from directly behind or directly in front of me. Am I being paranoid?

➜ LUGANOPIRATE

To keep the middle seat free would mean increasing airfares, which would in turn mean many of the travellers who use flights for cheap travel would cut back or even eliminate their travel altogether, giving lower flight loads or cutting flights altogether. If the legacy airlines, who also have a business class, implement this, why would you pay extra for a business class seat, the main benefit being the middle seat is free? As for paying for the middle seat to be kept free – and I’ll not name the airline here, but it’s all economy – I frequently do this when with Mrs LP as it is more comfortable. Once I travelled alone and for the extra comfort paid for the middle seat to be free. No taxes, etc, and it was a discount of about 35 per cent to my ticket. Pax in 3C turned up and greeted me and I told him no worries, as I’d paid for the middle seat to be free. He looked surprised and then said he’d done the same! We both laughed and jokingly made a “frontier” on the seat but did remark that if this was their policy the airline could theoretically have a 133 per cent flight load.

➜ CAPETONIANM

As pointed out in other threads, the HEPA filtered air on aircraft is about as pure as can be, and if you could spend the flight only breathing that air, your risk of infection would be extremely low.

The biggest danger area though is your passage to, through, and from the airport, on filthy transit buses/shuttles, using touchscreens, putting your stuff into grubby plastic bins at security, sitting on dirty seats, and a myriad of other vulnerable points.

➜ SIMONS1

In reality it will be impossible to enforce social distancing this way. Queues when boarding, use of middle seat, bus transfers to/from the plane. The realities of maintaining security with people milling around the tarmac trying to stay a metre apart just don’t work.