US: Congressman wants airlines to leave seats empty on planes to promote social distancing

The chairman of the US House Transportation Committee called on airlines Thursday to dramatically cut back the number of seats they offer on aircraft to promote social distancing. Rep. Peter DeFazio said he was acting after seeing a tweeted photo from a physician on a United flight from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, that showed passengers in every seat. Dr Ethan Weiss' tweets said passengers, including a group of 25 fellow health workers like himself who had been caring for coronavirus patients in New York, were "shocked" and "scared" at the sight of a full Boeing 737. "I would be, too, if I were about to spend the next five hours sealed in a tube with up to 184 passengers, all seated inches from one another, and any number of whom could be a carrier of COVID-19," wrote DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, in letters to two industry groups, Airlines for America and the National Air Carrier Association. DeFazio requests that the airline members of both groups voluntarily leave at least one empty seat between passengers, a move that he says would reduce the maximum load factor on narrow-body aircraft to 67% because of all the unoccupied middle seats.<br/>