FlyerTalker01565

I haven't flown an airline with open seating for ten years, but I fail to see a family's need is any stronger than anyone traveling with a friend, a colleague and so on.

If your children are young enough for you to have to sit right next to them, you pre-purchase seating or priority boarding. Can't have it both ways; low-cost + legacy benefits just because you decided to have kids.

GUWonder

Do you really want to be the babysitter for some random passenger's kid/kids just because the travel party inclusive of the young enough children got their tickets booked late enough onto your flight that paying for accompanying seats on the booked flight wasn't an option? Free babysitter? You may become pretty popular with the pappas/mammas then.

Governments in the OECD world seem to more broadly disagree with you. Check out the countries that have it set so car seats and/or strollers are ordinarily transported for free even as checked luggage -- even when otherwise the free checked baggage allowance for the accompanying adult(s) is zero.

Steve_19

Seat assignments for children and needing to watch over them (which more likely would prompt into a seat swap request) is a little bit of different topic then if families should be allowed to board early / with their group / at the end.

I agree if a family wants to board early they should pay for priority boarding or fly an airline which specifically grants families the first boarding right.

Agree again with the above poster though on why some parents think their decision to have kids moves them ahead of other passengers who could be traveling with family or friends...not sure why your child would rank, say, above my mother (if I was traveling with her).

slawecki

my wife(71 and i 78) pre board. we are no longer strong enough to stow luggage in the overhead. the FA's never put the luggage in the overhead. some strong person comes along up the and puts it up for us. we pre-board all the time, even though we fly J or F.

we wait to get off last, unless the FA's as us to go first.

MSPeconomist

I once had a 60-something woman push ahead of me when FC was called (I was in FC) because she had to board with her "baby" (that was the word she used). The "baby" turned out to be a guy who was about 40. He sat in FC while she was in coach.

Different airlines have different definitions of who is entitled to pre board because of small children. DL announcements usually specify a carseat to install, which excludes lap kids. In no sense does this mean teens even if they are your children, nor does one small kid entitle the entire extended family of thirty people to preboard.

ueutyi

Pre-boarding with children seems to be a completely legitimate request for me. However I don't understand people that believe priority boarding is rude.

CDTraveler

Try rephrasing the issue and see if you can understand:

Pre-boarding the slowest pax first and allowing them to clear the aisles enables the rest of pax to board more quickly.

greg99

CDTraveller has it right, which was my observation to the OP - it's better for you if the slow-moving passengers are dealt with first, because you'll board faster.

I'm guessing from the tone/tenor of your comments that you don't have kids or have never traveled with kids, and thus don't understand the processes involved in traveling with children. There's a lot of "stuff," and a lot of "stuff" that has to happen to get kids parked in an airplane seat.

You ever tried to carry a car seat down an aisle and then secure it in the aircraft seat? Have you ever watched it happen? Imagine carrying something larger than a rollaboard, manhandling it into a coach seat and then strapping it in place, all while monitoring a young child (or two or three). Now imagine doing it after other passengers have boarded. Not good for anyone.

Whether people like it or not, by law children are entitled to travel on airlines, so airlines need to accommodate them in the most efficient manner.

I agree with other posters who believe that the airlines should prohibit preboarding for people who don't need additional time in boarding. Unlike your mother (unless she's elderly/disabled, in which case she absolutely should get to preboard), small children are incapable of managing that "stuff," and so the parents have to manage it for them, in addition to their own "stuff." Doing so while other passengers are trying to board inevitably slows the process of boarding other passengers. 16 year olds shouldn't be preboarding, unless they have some sort of disability.

When my kids were little, we preboarded because we hated inconveniencing other passengers, and preboarding allowed us to do it. Now we board with Group 1 because my wife and I are 1K's and we can, even though my kids are better at traveling than most adults.

Greg

djk7

Considering the OP was about boarding when their group was called rather than waiting until later, all this talk of pre-boarding is really off topic.

tubulus

We always board last when possible to minimize time spent in our seats and maximize toddler-running-around-get-out-energy time. I generally try to carry on as little as possible, which generally means one relatively large backpack that can fit below the seat in front of our toddler (who needs no leg room). Even if I have a rollaboard with me, that's not going to have any of our plane activities/food/etc in it, so if I need to gate check it, who cares.

greg99

The topic of the thread is "Is boarding early with children rude?" - I don't consider boarding with your designated group as "early" but rather "on time."

If I misunderstood, my mistake, although I was actually responding to a poster offended by children boarding before F pax.

If I did misunderstand, and answered the wrong question, and the question is actually "Is boarding with your group with children rude?" my answer is a very rude "NFW"...

Steve_19

I was wondering to myself how long it would take someone to post the normal "you don't have kids so you don't get it" comment. Not long apparently.

Yeah this is something I CAN understand, but only because I'm a genius , again was waiting for this "comment" to rear its head.

Again with the "you cannot possibly understand / faced this kind of hardship" comments - to me this is the most annoying thing about people who have / travel with children. But you are right Greg that I have never done this and it does not sound easy.

Guess I was in the wrong arresting those two 6-year olds on my last flight...

My experience with boarding right after the "families group" has been different - usually the time needed to get settled is longer and leads to a backup on the jet bridge. And then, IME, many families monopolize more then needed part of the overheard bins.

Is there actual data to show that boarding families first is much faster for all? If you can show me I will drop the point. Although my annoyance with parents who think they have the "right" to pre-board due to simply having reproduced will not be going away soon I feel.

Steve_19

Is this proven by hard data? IME I feel this is not the case. Also does not address my annoyance with the entitled parents.

GUWonder

Given 3-3-3 and 3-4-3 seating arrangements, car seat placement in seat is more likely to be passenger displacing if the car seat installer boards later than sooner. Courtesy of airlines' emergency evacuation concerns and how car seat placement works into that.

greg99

Well, you're the one who said that you weren't "sure why your child would rank, say, above my mother (if I was traveling with her)." Since you said you didn't understand why traveling with children was different from traveling with able-bodied adults, I was attempting to help you understand.

-and-

So, putting aside what seems to be an anti-"breeder" philosophy (which often seems to be at the heart of these sorts of threads), my point wasn't that parenthood was necessary to understand why traveling with young children was more difficult than traveling without children, but it is sufficient to understand.

I traveled without children for many years, including in the pre-GS 1K days, and I certainly took pity on parents who had to schlep gear down to the plan, and didn't bemoan the fact that they were boarding before me, when I would otherwise be the first person on the plane.


Or, alternatively, that means that they didn't start the pre-boarding early enough. I will tell you from recent experiences on crutches, that is an issue.

No, you make a fair point - I don't have data suggesting that preboarding is more efficient. The airlines don't generally publish that sort of data.

That said, while I acknowledge the importance of data in decision making, I would also suggest that you consider the conclusions drawn by the authors of this meta-analysis:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/

Greg