India’s national carrier, Air India will now onwards designate two rows on every flight for its female-passengers only.
Air India made this announcement after two incidents in the past month of men allegedly groping cabin staff or other passengers.
Air India general manager-revenue management Meenakshi Malik told , “We feel, as national carriers, it is our responsibility to enhance comfort level to female passengers. There are a lot of female passengers who travel alone with us and we will be blocking a few seats for them.”
The service, which comes at no extra charge, started this week on internal flights and will be rolled out across the network throughout the year.
This move comes after a recent on-board incident where on Air India’s Mumbai-Newark flight 40-year-old Indian national, Ganesh Parkar groped a woman in December last year.
Parker was a business class passenger but changed his seat to sit next to a female passenger in the economy class and allegedly groped her when she fell asleep.
According to court documents, the woman yelled, "What the hell are you doing?" and crew members instructed Parkar to move back to his assigned seat.
Parkar repeatedly asked flight attendants to allow him to speak to the woman but his requests were denied, prosecutors said.
He wrote her two notes in which he apologised for a "moment's stupidity" and admitted he had been "stupid," according to the complaint.
Parkar was charged with one count of abusive sexual contact on a plane, authorities said.
Days after this incident, the airline announced its crew would be carrying restraints on domestic and international flights to be used on unruly passengers as a last resort.
"We used to carry restrainers only on our international flights but will now have them on both domestic and international flights. All our aircraft will have two pairs of restraining devices," Air India chairman Ashwani Lohani told .
