Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri recently announced that domestic air travel would resume from May 25 in a calibrated manner. To this end, airports and air carriers have been readying for the restarting of operations.
According to The Press Trust of India, he has also said he is not in favour of keeping the middle seat empty as social distancing will still not be met.
The standard operating procedure for domestic air travel will be announced soon, and it is necessary as the aviation industry’s revenue has been zero for the past 2 months.
It’s not viable to keep the middle seat vacant. Even if you keep the middle seat vacant you will still have a situation where prescribed distance for social distancing isn’t followed. If you were to do it then you have to hike up airline ticket price by 33%.
Twitter had some interesting reactions to this statement about the middle seat.
Further updates to the situation are awaited.