By Natalie DeCoste
One silver lining to traveling during the pandemic is you probably won’t have to sit next to someone on your flight. Unfortunately, that perk is set to end as Delta announced it would start selling middle seats again.
Delta Airlines is the last remaining U.S. airline that has not been booking the middle seats on flights because of the pandemic. The company announced that on May 1 that it will start booking the middle seat once more.
“While Delta’s decision to block middle seats has given many customers a reason to choose Delta over the past year, the signature hospitality of our employees and the experiences they deliver to customers every day have also deepened their trust in our airline,” said Delta CEO Ed Bastian.
Delta first started blocking its middle seats in April 2020 at the start of the pandemic. Other airlines had similar policies to Delta, including Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, and Alaska Airlines, but all those companies have since gone back to selling all their seats.
Physical distancing on airplanes is difficult to do, but companies have constantly reassured travelers that they are doing everything possible to mitigate the spread of COVID. Specifically, airlines have claimed that filtration systems and intense cleaning make it unlikely that travelers will catch the coronavirus on a plane.
With the number of vaccinated Americans rising, Delta is letting go of its open middle seat policy.
“The relationships we’ve built, together with the knowledge that nearly 65 percent of those who flew Delta in 2019 anticipate having at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by May 1, are what’s giving us the assurance to offer customers the ability to choose any seat on our aircraft, while also introducing new services, products and rewards to support the journey. We take great pride in the trust we’ve built with customers by listening and delivering on what they said was most important, and that is the approach you can continue to expect,” said Bastian.
The policy also coincides with the start of the most lucrative travel season — summer. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby recently told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce aviation conference that domestic leisure demand has almost entirely recovered from the negative effect of the pandemic. On Monday, American Airlines said bookings were back to 90% of 2019 levels in the week ended March 26 and that it plans to take most of its planes out of storage to meet demand in the second quarter.
