Keep the Middle Seat Empty for Now, Please
Up in the air, six feet of distance isn’t possible, but three feet is better than nothing.
Planes are filling up again.
Photographer: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images
Perhaps the most notorious of the many full-airline-cabin photos recently posted on Twitter is one taken by a cardiologist on his return trip to California after helping treat Covid-19 patients in New York City: Passengers wearing a variety of surgical and makeshift masks fill every seat. “I guess @united is relaxing their social distancing policy these days?” the caption asks.
Restaurants, retail stores, gyms and other businesses reopening across the U.S. are subject to state and local rules requiring six feet of space between customers, but airlines are responsible only to themselves. Surely, as Maria Cantwell of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, has argued to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and the White House Coronavirus Task Force, federal guidelines are needed to make people on long flights as safe from coronavirus infection as people ordering lunch in a pizzeria.