When something bad happens, human nature is trying to find an advantage, or a hope for the future.
When the coronavirus pandemic brought the world to a standstill, ushering in the era of social estrangement and setting the most frequent flyers flying indefinitely, optimists focused on the worst part of modern air travel: the center seat.
“The coronavirus has effectively killed the middle seat,” a Popular Mechanics article proclaimed in May. “Will empty middle seats help social distancing on airplanes?” Asked the BBC. Here at Business Insider, we wrote about an innovative new seat design that could create a barrier between every passenger on the bus, something that a variety of designers have released during the pandemic. Meanwhile, Frontier Airlines was criticized for selling empty intermediate seats next to them as an added benefit to passengers, accused of taking advantage of security.
But within a few months of our global crisis, it is clear that the general consensus was wrong. The middle seat is here to stay.
In late June, American Airlines announced that it would no longer block the center seat on its planes or limit capacity on its flights. Although blocking seats was a relatively easy decision when demand was at its lowest point, as customers began to slowly return, maintaining a third of the seats on a given free flight was not possible for the airline without adding more flights or use more, more expensive planes.
American is not the only airline that fills its flights. United will sell all seats on board and has argued that social distancing is not possible on planes. Spirit, Frontier, and other low-cost carriers have also continued to fill their planes.
Delta, however, has said it will limit flights to at least Sept. 30, blocking the economy middle seats and all other first-class seats. The airline has also said it will add additional flights to routes where demand exceeds limited capacity.
Airlines and industry representatives, including the International Air Transport Association, have argued that social distancing on flights is not necessary, due to air flow patterns in airplanes, high air particle filters efficiencies that prevent the recirculation of microbes in the air, other cleaning measures, and the use of masks.
American Airlines, United and others said they were taking other security measures to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Those measures include mandatory on-board masks, recently implemented cleaning and disinfection procedures, and require passengers to complete a health self-assessment before flights.
Although American was called by Senator Bernie Sanders and Dr. Anthony Fauci for filling planes, others defended the action. United communications director Josh Earnest said this week that “when it comes to blocking middle seats, that’s a public relations strategy. That’s not a security strategy.”
Earnest added that even if a middle seat was locked, it is simply impossible to provide the recommended six feet of social distance on an airplane.
“When you’re on board the plane, if you’re sitting in the aisle and the center seat is empty, the person across the aisle is less than six feet from you,” he said. “The person in the window is less than six feet from you. The people in the row in front of you are less than six feet from you. The people in the row behind you are less than six feet from you.”
“If you want to stay safe on the plane, we need to wear a mask, we need good air filtration, the plane needs to be thoroughly cleaned and we need to make sure that every stage of your journey can be socially distant, that we are doing that. steps scientists have recommended we take. “
So far, no localized outbreaks or hot spots of COVID-19 date back to a particular flight, although there has been limited scientific analysis of air travel.
In any case, as these other measures, particularly the mandatory masks, become common, and as the central seats are reopened, we will be able to say more definitively if they are effective in preventing the transmission of COVID-19 in the flights.
So we can accept that little return to normalcy: the knowledge that despite hopes for more privacy or space to spread out among those of us who don’t want to empty their bank accounts for a plane ticket, the center seat is here to stay .
