Kid kicking the back of your airline seat? It’s a tale as old as time—an indignity of air travel on par with the objectively bad food and the sock-less foot of a neighbor—but one that might become less of a problem should a new initiative take off. This November, Corendon Airlines will launch an adults-only section on flights between Amsterdam and Curaçao. With dedicated seating for passengers ages 16 and up, the Dutch airline hopes to improve the experiences of both those with and without children.
The “Only Adult” zone will be situated at the front of the route’s Airbus A350-900 aircraft in an area “separated from the rest of the aircraft by means of walls and curtains,” according to a press release from Corendon. It’s worth noting that, while the airline does offer a “premium” booking option, there are no business or first classes to speak of.
The airline posits that business travelers in particular will enjoy the adults-only section as this means they can work in an environment where quiet is more or less guaranteed—while it’s not always that a boisterous or screaming child is in your vicinity, they do have a way of appearing when you least need them around.
Parents, in turn, will be relieved of some of the stress of having a misbehaving child around child-free passengers.
Flying child-free comes at a price. The section’s nine XL seats (with extra legroom) and 93 standard seats add €100 and €45 to the cost of a regular one-way ticket, respectively—the route itself debuts on November 3 along with the “Only Adult” concept. At the time of reporting, a nonstop, one-way ticket from Amsterdam to Curaçao with KLM on the same day cost $664 on Google Flights.
While Corendon is the first European carrier to roll out an adults-only option, such experimentation is not without precedent globally. Scoot, a low-cost subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, has offered Scoot-in-Silence cabins since at least 2018. Positioned between business and economy, this class of seating is reserved for passengers over the age of 12. A representative for Scoot could not be reached for comment at the time of publishing.
