No Middle Seats For Women's As Well As Help After Plane lands' Vistara Makes New Policy

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In a country where women travelers face myriad dangers, one airline has an idea: chivalry, and no middle seats. With its Woman Flyer service, Vistara has begun offering to help women flying solo with their bags, escort them to and from their ground transportation, and give them preferred window and aisle seats on their flights-no middles. 

"Our staff is equipped to help women travelling alone with the booking of airport-authorized taxis, as well as escort them to the airport taxi stand upon their request," Kapoor said via email. "This service is a sincere effort to ensure peace of mind of our women customers." 

 The problems for India's tourism flow directly from cultural issues around gender inequality in Indian society, said Marta Turnbull, editor of the International Women's Travel Center, a resource site that compiles a list of the 10 most dangerous countries for women travelers using a variety of government travel warnings, United Nations data, and other sources. 

India is fifth on that list, which also includes Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. "We did find there is a correlation between what happens to local women and women travelers," said Turnbull, who lives in Boulder, Colo. 

"There are a lot of activists who are taking it on as an issue. We're optimistic that things will get better, but it will take a while-a long time." In efforts to combat sexual assault and harassment on public transit, officials from Calcutta to Mexico City to Leipzig, Germany, have tried offering separate train cars and buses reserved for women and children. 

Department for Transport when it was exploring such ideas found they would mark "a retrograde step" in countries like the U.K. where gender equality was the norm. "Although women-only transport may be an effective means of reducing unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport in some countries, they are essentially 'short-term fixes' and reinforce a message that women must be contained and segregated in order to protect them," it found.

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