A United States senator wants to propose legislation that blocks intermediate seats on airplanes after flying on a crowded American Airlines flight.

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Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. AP

• U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon plans to introduce legislation to require U.S. airlines to block middle seats on their planes.
• Merkley was flying on American Airlines on Thursday when he was frustrated by the airline’s lack of social distancing policies and criticized them on Twitter.
• After the tweet went viral with nearly 40,000 likes, Merkley went on to say that he will work with other lawmakers to include the central seat mandate in a larger airline reform bill.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

The U.S. government is about to assess whether airlines should block intermediate seats after a senator flew on a crowded flight on Thursday that prompted him to take action.

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon was flying on an American Airlines flight just before the holiday weekend and saw firsthand the airline’s lack of social distancing policies in action. The masked Democrat then went to Twitter, where he posted a photo of his flight with a dark message to the airline:

—Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) July 2, 2020

“How many Americans will die before he takes the middle seats, with his clients shoulder to shoulder, hour after hour,” the Democratic lawmaker wrote. “This is incredibly irresponsible. People eat and drink on airplanes and must remove their masks to do so. There is no way that the spread of COVID infections is not being facilitated.”

After receiving nearly 40,000 likes on the platform, Merkley followed up with a tweet saying he would address the problem when he returned to Washington and joined an unidentified group of lawmakers already undergoing airline-related reforms.

“I will introduce a bill to ban the sale of middle seats through this pandemic,” Merkley said in a July 3 tweet. “And I will work with colleagues to include it in a package of airline liability reforms that they are developing.”

If Congress passes the bill and the President enacts it, it would be the first federal mandate regulating social distancing on board aircraft since the start of the pandemic. Most of the policy options have been left to the airlines, as Business Insider discovered when reviewing the social distancing policies of the top 11 airlines in the U.S.

American Airlines had been restricting flights to 85% of capacity during the month of June, as Business Insider saw first-hand on two US flights in early June, and recently announced that it will sell its flights at capacity beginning July 1. . Two of its main rivals, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines, are taking the opposite approach and blocking intermediate seats until at least September 30, when the provisions of the CARES Act stimulus package will expire.

After this weekend, only four US airlines are expected to block intermediate seats or limit the number of reservations for each flight, as JetBlue Airways will no longer follow the practice as of July 7. Alaska Airlines, which has a hub in Merkley’s home state of Oregon, is only scheduled to block intermediate seats until July 31.

Airlines are flying fewer flights, and they are filling up as more Americans travel

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An American Airlines plane. AP

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, empty flights became common, but they are becoming rare as the summer travel season begins.

Just two days after June 18, daily numbers of passengers leaving US airports dropped to less than 500,000, according to the Transportation Security Administration, although the agency has not released numbers for the weekend. July 4 due to the federal holiday.

It is still a fraction of the 2 million travelers that took to the skies at the same time last year, but airlines are also flying fewer flights due to declining demand.

American Airlines is operating slightly more than half the number of domestic flights this month as it did in July 2019, but said it will increase its flight schedule on July 7. Rival Delta’s July domestic flight is also about 60% less than the same month last year.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, called Americans directly during a hearing in Congress last week about their lack of social distancing policies, according to The Hill.

“I can tell you that when they announced that there was obviously a big disappointment the other day with American Airlines,” said Redfield, Tal Axelrod of The Hill reported. “I can say that this is under critical review right now by us at CDC. We don’t think it is the right message.”

Locking the middle seats does not guarantee six foot social distancing, as recommended in CDC guidelines, with an average middle seat less than two feet wide. The airline says other features of the aircraft, including high-efficiency particulate air filters, are making the skies safe.

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