Originally Posted by
PTravel
The "very presence of young passengers" doesn't cause me "distress." Screaming children, crying babies, loud talkers and belligerent drunks annoy the heck out of me. And parents who bring screaming children and crying babies on board are just as inconsiderate as drunks who drink too much and become belligerent.
You're absolutely right. I don't get to decide who can buy airplane tickets. But I can THINK what I want about people who are so inconsiderate that they give no thought to the comfort of the dozens and dozens of strangers who are flying with them.
Absolutely agree that you can have whatever opinion you want. But your earlier post, and the posts of others, suggest that you have a desire for certain types of passengers to be outright banned from flying, or from flying in certain cabins. This requires that someone make a sweeping pre-judgement of an entire class of passengers and exclude them from an otherwise generally available service based on nothing more than, in this case, their age.
My argument is simple - rather than arguing for a rather unfair exclusion that most of us agree the airlines will never actually make into policy, someone who knows that air travel always includes the potential for other passengers who are annoying might be better served by preparing in ways within their own control to minimize the annoyance.
What you're still missing the point on is that YOU are being painfully inconsiderate by suggesting that parents who bring their children on flights are ignorant of the impact they have on those around them. Rather, most parents I know are painfully aware of this, and as a result often choose to drive to destinations when they can - spending days stuck in a car just to get to the beach for a weekend or something similar. Perhaps YOU should consider that for every dozen families doing that, there's going to be one you encounter on a plane that is going overseas for some reason, or needs to get somewhere and back quickly due to an emergency or work constraints, or any number of other reasons. Trust me, those folks don't want to have to put up with the looks people like you give them any more than you want to put up with the possibility that some kid may make some noise for a little while within your shared metal tube. That doesn't remove the fact that they need to get somewhere at a certain time, just like the rest of us, and they should be able to do just that if they are willing to pay for it. And all that is even before I get to the point about how these families shouldn't need to justify their air travel by situations where an emergency or schedule demands it - it's also perfectly okay for them to fly, y'know, just because they WANT to.