Southwest Airlines will go back to filling the middle seats on its planes, starting December 1st, leaving Delta as the last airline keeping the seats empty. Southwest says its move is ‘science-based’ and safe for passengers.
Earlier in the year, all the major airlines had blocked middle seats for passengers not traveling together as a measure to provide some anti-virus isolation in flight.
With a combination of financial pressure for airlines and a growing belief that masked air travel is among the safer ways to travel, that’s been changing. United has gone as far as calling seat-blocking a marketing ploy rather than a safety measure.
Southwest’s statement says “This practice of effectively keeping middle seats open bridged us from the early days of the pandemic, when we had little knowledge about the behavior of the virus, to now. Today, aligned with science-based findings from trusted medical and aviation organizations, we will resume selling all available seats for travel beginning December 1, 2020.”
