Originally Posted by Erasmus

FWIW, I witnessed a very unusual situation on AS last night. There were four lap infants in FC. Unfortunately, AS aircraft apparently only have extra oxygen masks on the left side of the plane, and this particular one only had three rows of FC. Hence, they were unable to accommodate one of the lap children!

IMHO, they handled it very poorly, downgrading one of the mothers (and child) and then upgrading someone else from coach. Judging from the arguments, it appears all four parents had paid FC fares. If it were me, I would have found an upgrader in the cabin and downgraded them (assuming there was one), and then left an empty seat next to the mother and lap infant that were on the right side of the plane. More to the point, with four infants in FC, I can't believe someone wouldn't have voluntarily removed themselves from the cabin if asked!

Anyway, the mother that was downgraded was the one sitting on the wrong side of the plane, and I have no idea in what order they declared lap infants, so it's not clear any of the parents could have done anything differently, but presumably she should have been reseated on the left side of the plane when she declared the lap infant. Regardless, it appears in at least this instance that AS fumbled and did not correctly detect that they allowed too many lap infants in the cabin, leaving the FAs (and eventually GAs and supervisor) to fight it out during boarding.

Karma: at least one of the three lap infants in FC was screaming the entire way, while the one downgraded to coach was perfectly behaved.