I have always tended to think that kids were just a fact of life aboard a plane, like the loud guy in the seat behind, or the shrill announcements that the seatbelt light means to put your seatbelt on. I've only had a couple of flights with noisy children in F or J, and have just assumed it was a fluke--why would there be children in Business Class?

In the last 36 hours my opinion has changed.

I just did 16 hours on a PR flight from MNL to SFO in business class yesterday. There were not one, not two, but SEVEN screaming demon-spawn rugrats between maybe 6 months and three years split between C and F.

The entire flight, the infants did a round-robin thing where one would scream at the top of its lungs long enough to start the next one off. The toddlers ran wild through the entire plane, strewing toys and smearing food everywhere. Parents either ignored them completely or looked on with indifference.

My Bose noise-cancellers were actually more effective than I thought they would be at muffling the howling. But they were of no help when the 2-year-old behind me decided that the top of my seatback was the perfect place to stage his truck battle while I was trying to sleep. Or when the sticky juice cup came flying over the back of the seat next to me.

The woman next to me mumbled something about putting them in cages and I'm afraid for the moment I agreed with her, as long as they were in the hold.

When I was that age, my mother always gave us Dramamine before long car trips to prevent carsickness, or flights to prevent planesickness. Now that I think about it, we were also usually medicated against moviesickness and churchsickness too. Maybe she was onto something.

-alan in seattle