United Airlines broke own social distancing rules on flight full of ‘scared and shocked’ passengers

‘All passengers and employees were asked to wear face coverings’

Ethan Weiss onboard a United Airlines flight to San Francisco (Ethan Weiss via REUTERS)

A United Airlines flight was shown to not be following the company’s own social distancing rules, in a tweet posted over the weekend.

Last week, United’s chief customer officer, sent a statement to all passengers that said they were “automatically blocking middle seats to give you enough space on board”.

On Saturday, a tweet posted by Dr Ethan Weiss from onboard a flight from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, showed that middle seats were still being used on the flight.

In response to what he saw, Dr Weiss tweeted: “I guess @united is relaxing their social distancing policy these days? Every seat full on this 737,” and accompanied it with a picture of passengers sitting in the middle seats.

In a second tweet, Dr Weiss said that passengers on the flight were “scared” that social distancing was not being observed.

“We are about to land & I just wanted to say a few things. 1) people on this plane are scared/ shocked. 2) I have no idea why most of them are travelling. 3)I am with a group of 25 nurses and doctors who have been working in NYC hospitals for the past 2-4 weeks. We are coming home,” he tweeted.

United Airlines said that empty middle seats could not be guaranteed, and Kimberly Gibbs, a spokesperson for the airline, told USA Today that the company is attempting to implement social distancing.

“We’ve overhauled our cleaning and safety procedures and implemented a new boarding and deplaning process to promote social distancing,” she said.

Ms Gibbs added that the airline has been running complimentary flights for healthcare professionals, and that it has meant that there are more passengers on some flights.

“Our flight to San Francisco had an additional 25 medical professionals on board who were flying for free to volunteer their time in New York,” she said.

Every person shown in the photo was wearing a face covering, and Ms Gibbs confirmed that the airline gave one each to passenger onboard the flight.

“We’ve provided complimentary flights for more than 1,000 doctors and nurses in the past few weeks alone — and all passengers and employees were asked to wear face coverings, consistent with our new policy.”

According to a tracking project hosted by Johns Hopkins University, there are now more than 1.2 million people who have tested positive for coronavirus in the US. The death toll has reached at least 79,531.