In a world first, China Southern is allowing passenger purchase quite the unique upgrade - personal space!

Passengers of flights leaving the airlines hub in Guangzhou can purchase the economy seat next to them for a discount, ensuring that they are rubbing elbows with no one.

What are the details?

Dubbed the 'One Passenger More Seats' upgrade, it allows passengers to buy up to three economy seats next to them onboard any China Southern flight (where applicable) and have them empty onboard. This means more room to spread out (and in a 3 x row enough room to lie down) and the avoidance of awkward conversations with seatmates.

This would be quite useful on long-haul big aircraft flights (such as an Airbus A380 or a Boeing 777) but it would be harder for the airline to justify on smaller regional flights that come in a 3-3 configuration, especially on dense routes.

How much does it cost?

This new upgrade would only work if it costs less than a fully occupied seat, but is still profitable for the airline. According to BusinessTraveller.com, the seats are cheaper than buying a normal economy seat, ranging from as low as RMB250 (US$37.2) to RMB1,700 (US$253) depending on how long the flight is. For comparison, a normal economy seat between New York and Guangzhou is RMB4,480 (US$667).

But it gets better still; instead of always having to just pay to upgrade, passengers can enter a luck based lottery at check-in to secure an extra empty seat. By spending iterations of $97,$179, $253 for 1,2,3 seats respectively, passengers go into the running to 'win' the empty seats next to them. The one caveat is that it is only once check-in is closed that the seats are released and they find out if they are a lucky 'winner'.

This means it's actually better to book these empty seats during check-in rather than waiting for the lottery (especially when it's a cheaper flight). Plus, the price starts to get rather expensive when compared to Business Class (on short haul) and it's possible that you could pay more for an inferior product. It is unclear what happens if you want to upgrade your empty seat into a normal seat for a friend.

Currently, this offer is only available for passengers leaving the hub in Guangzhou, but the airline hopes to soon expand it to flights at Shanghai and Beijing.

We have yet to see if other airlines will follow in China Southern's footsteps.

What do you think of the new policy? Would you want an empty seat next to you on your next flight? Let us know in the comments.