Originally Posted by United777Heavy
In all of my years of flying, this is certainly a new one.
I am flying ORD to SEA on 9/9/06... and because one passenger has an allergy to peanuts, the crew decides not to serve any snack boxes that has any nuts or anything that has been packaged near a nut facility. In case any smell or any particles get into the air, it won't cause any problems.
So that discounts 2 of the 4 snack boxes and the small snack bags. I understand the need for the health and safety for everyone, but please.
This airborne excuse was just lame, as when I ate my almonds during the course of the movie, it didn't do anything to this passenger.
anyone else seen this extreme service change just for one passenger.
It's funny how people view things.
I have no food allergies and never really gave much thought to the whole thing. However, we found out last year that my son (now three) is highly allergic to peanuts. His doctor gave us an EpiPen. He ended up having a cashew a few months later that was baked in peanut oil. Within 60 seconds he was spitting things up. Then full vomiting. He started choking and we were able to stick him with the EpiPen and then go to the E/R (which we learned later was wrong--call 911 for paramedics).
My point: yes as parents, we have a responsibility to keep our kid away from peanuts, etc. We've flown many times on UA and NZ and simply tell the FAs no nuts. However, the big issue is we can't see every second what a three year old will get into (say peanuts left over from a previous pax in a not properly cleaned seat).
The way I look at it, I don't want to "inconvenience" people but if it was YOUR kid what would you want? I'm sorry if you can't have nuts for a few hours for a particular flight, but isn’t that better than a dead child? I’m sorry I can’t afford my own jet to fly my family wherever I go. But sometimes, in a modern society, we make sacrifices for others.
One thing I want to point out about the EpiPen. It's not a guarantee that everything's better. Our procedures are 1) stick child, 2) call 911. Over time the EpiPen can loose its effectivness. So you can see even if we're prepared, if things go bad, there’s no on time arrival for everyone.
The other thing is that for some reasons, our doctor and allergist didn’t have good reasons, we’re seeing more and more children with allergies to peanuts. My son has two other children in a class of 11 that are also allergic to peanuts!
Just my .02.
PS Edit: no it wasn't us on the flight. We're at home waiting for baby #2 to arrive and praying that she isn't allergic too.
And to be clear,
we don't ask everyone else to not have peanuts, we just make sure we're not given any.