Doctor shares shocking photo after coronavirus promise by airline
A doctor has shared photos of a packed plane full of doctors and nurses after he claims he was promised the middle seats would be empty.
Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist from San Francisco, was returning from New York City on a United Airlines flight on Sunday.
On Twitter, he claims he was travelling with a group of 25 nurses and doctors. It’s not clear if he had been working with coronavirus patients.
The virus has killed more than 26,000 people in New York. In total, more than 1.3 million people in the US have contracted it and more than 80,000 people have died.
“I guess United is relaxing their social distancing policy these days?” Mr Weiss tweeted.
“Every seat is full on this 737.”
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Mr Weiss shared an email from United telling its customers it was leaving middle seats empty.
“People on this plane are scared (and/or) shocked,” he tweeted.
“United flew us here for free. They got a lot of great PR for taking great care of us on the way out including from me.
“They could have avoided this by just communicating better. They literally just sent an email 10 days ago telling all of us the middle seats would be empty.”
United told Click2Houston.com it would not say how many people were on Mr Weiss’ flight.
However, it "did have a higher than average load factor but it still departed with empty seats”, United said.
The airline said it was making some middle seats unavailable for customers to select but also not reducing capacity on flights, so a passenger could be given a middle or adjacent seat, CNN reported last week.
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