Running the rule over fellow airline passengers ; it 's as common as stowing your bag under the seat in front of you and fastening your seat belt . Who has n't spent a few moments sitting at a departure gate wondering who you might be seated next to for the next few hours ? You hope it 's not the family with the hyperactive child or the nervous flyer who unfortunately , for them and you , is out of valium . Now Dutch airline KLM has tapped into our in-built social screening to offer a service that will let you know more about fellow flyers well before take off . Launched this month as part of their online booking service , `` Meet & Seat '' allows passengers to link their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles to the seats they choose . The idea is that when picking an aisle or a window seat you can see if the person next to you has similar interests and the potential for stimulating conversation , or if you 'll need extra batteries for your noise-cancelling headphones . So far KLM is only letting passengers on flights from Amsterdam to New York , San Francisco and Sao Paolo use the service . The airline says all personal profile details are deleted from the airline 's systems 48-hours after the flight . Are you a high-flyer ? Take our air travel quiz . For those that are n't so bold and want to be set up with strangers by social media , a website for shy and lovelorn flyers went live earlier this year . Called `` We Met on a Plane , '' it is designed to help passengers who may have had a moment of mutual attraction or enjoyed a conversation , but forgot to get those digits before deplaning , . `` It 's about the ones that got away , '' says founder Will Scully-Power . `` We 're doing what Mark Zuckerberg ca n't . If you 're single and you did n't get the other person 's name , how can you search for them on the internet or Facebook ? '' Scully-Power first thought of the idea last year after meeting his current girlfriend on a flight from Thailand to Sydney . The 31-year-old Australian did get her number and love blossomed , but he thought that more people have probably missed their opportunity than seized it . When researching if there was something in his idea he found there were around 4,000 internet searches each month for `` we met on a plane . '' It 's early days for the site , but it has clearly stuck a chord with flyers with people from 28 countries posting lonely-heart missives . Some posts even mention flights they took over ten years ago and a fateful missed connection . That could count as excess baggage .
A new service for passengers to see others ' Facebook profiles when they check - in . New ' Seat & Touch ' service designed to help passengers sit with like - minded travelers . Another website set up for those who missed a Facebook connection on board .