I like the idea of this option for women - air travel

There was a very upsetting story this weekend of a young teenaged girl, with mutism, who was sexually assaulted over several hours on a flight by a male stranger on a flight. Her parents, for some unfathomable reason and despite her obvious vulnerabilities, were sat in a different row! They're now sueing the airline principally, i think, for continuing to serve booze to a man who was already drunk and failing to do enough once what was happening came to light.

Stories like this make me think men should be kept in the hold but having the option to avoid them is a start.

Well having spent the last flight I took with the man next to me's bare leg pressed up against mine because he couldn't possibly be expected just to take up his own seat space, I would whole-heartedly support this.

It works well on trains and the metro in India. Women can travel independently and feel safe and this allows them to work. In the past it only seemed to be male business travellers using planes, but there are more women now and I don’t see why it can’t be done. Personally I would always choose to sit next to other women.

Easier surely to have women's areas, men's areas and mixed areas...of course there'll always be one idiot...but...

The areas could be kept to their category early in the booking process and then made more general later to avoid the problem outlined above, so you'd just need to book in early to make sure you got your preference?

There have been problems with men, I think mostly very orthodox Jewish men, kicking off when airlines have seated them next to women? This might help avoid that type of situation.

This is going to break down once the plane starts to get full, as there will be dozens of free seats that only women can reserve. Then the men will have to wait until boarding to be assigned a seat and probably end up sitting next to a woman anyway.

Nice idea, not workable.

I've never seen anyone lap dance past a man to get out. There physically isn't room to do that on Ryanair! The correct way is for other passengers to stand up and move into the aisle for 20 seconds while the person in the window seat gets out.