mvoight

I often wonder how these people manage to get out of chairs at home.

eponymous_coward

They probably don't sit in chairs that are attached to the floor and are only a couple of feet behind another chair in a fairly narrow row of chairs at home.

jtav559

I think there is a distinction to be made between infants that are crying as a natural response to a new/unfamiliar environment, not to mention the air-pressure changes, sounds, smells, etc. that can start a crying fit..... and the tantrums of a child who is of enough age to know the "proper" behavior of being in public who proceeds to throw a fit or behave poorly without parental intervention.

I was on LAX-LHR in biz in January and had a mom who purchased a seat for her 3-ish year old (they were seated in the middle 2 seats together, not a lap child situation), were directly across from me. Kid had the initial jitters of being on a plane which mom tried her best to quell, but eventually just gave up. Everytime the mom would put the child in the seat and then sat down herself, the kid wound up the lungs and was screaming. Not crying like an infant, screaming and being obnoxious. Not long after that, the kid ran rampant in the cabin. I saw it as a safety issue first, common courtesy issue second. I was surprised that the FA's didn't speak with her as we hit some serious chop over the midwest that made even myself blush and take a stiffer sip of my drink. By the end of the flight, side eye shade was thrown from almost everyone in a 5 seat vicinity of the epicenter.

Now, as much as I wanted to read her the riot act, I just kept my headphones on and figured that the karmatic gods would be just and serve down some be-fitting punishment for the lack of common courtesy to her fellow passengers. And realistically, the last thing I wanted to do was get in a verbal altercation with a mother defending the (inappropriate) behavior of her toddler at 35k feet - that would not have played out well in today's "fact's be damned" world of reporting airline related news.

Is there a good solution? Maybe a properly trained FA could handle it, but in today's prevalent "victim mentality" society, most of us fear the backlash of a situation going pear shaped and our good intentions suddenly being under a microscope.

But, I am pleased to know that for every parent who doesn't care about this type of thing, there are plenty of parents that do care and take responsibility for their kids and their behavior on an airplane. Hell, I have done the walky-bouncy down the aisle for a mom and child on a flight so she could have a break and eat dinner. It is a team effort up there!

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ashill

I'm sorry for your rough flight. It sucks, but it happens. As parents of a young child, my partner and I do our very best to keep her quiet during flights. Usually, she's pretty good. But despite our best efforts, sometimes she's not. We're very sorry when it happens, but there's only so much we can do. And there's nothing the airline can do; if a flight attendant (a stranger) tried to intervene when our daughter is irrational, she would almost certainly get worse. So what exactly are you asking for compensation for from the airline? What should they have done differently? Move the paid business class customers to coach so they can inconvenience other people instead of the more-important (but many fewer) business class customers?

^ Good on AA; they are 100% correct.

It may well be a problem that the parents didn't do more, though there are times when there's not much you can do as a parent. And the odds are very good that the parents were suffering as much or more than you. I do occasionally encounter parents who are not properly taking care of their children or enforcing rules (for somewhat older children). If that's the case here, again, you have my sympathy and my anger at the parents. But that's frankly quite rare in my experience.

This is where you are mistaken. You paid more for the leg room (as you say), the bed, and the service (both on the ground and in the air). Parents with children are welcome to pay more for the same thing as well; apparently, these parents did. It may well be true that a smaller percentage of the travellers in business class have young children than in coach (for many reasons, including the need to buy more tickets -- even the 10% of fare plus 100% of some taxes and fees for a lap infant on an international ticket is not negligible --, parents with young children tend to be in their 20s and 30s and thus on average have less disposable income than older adults, families are more likely to be flying on their own dime instead of their company's dime, etc), but that's not because there's a rule keeping families out of premium cabins.

Well, I think that would violate the law, as AA is a common carrier and (rightly) cannot discriminate based on age. Why shouldn't families be allowed to go on vacation? And as others have said, I am far more often annoyed by disrespectful adults than crying children.

Yes, drop it and forget it, and also try to have some human sympathy and empathy. If airlines compensated customers for specious claims like yours, that would ultimately be money coming from those of us who don't make such specious claims.

And the DOT having an issue? Please. (Especially since you say this was a four hour JAL flight, so it didn't even involve the US except for AA's code being on the flight.)

danielonn

I'll add my 2 cents. The OP had every right to be on the flight just as the infant and his parents. When I came back from CDG-SFO there was a family with a toddler and I offered to give up my window seat and move to the 4 row middle seats in an ailse on the Airbus 380. The passenger sitting next to me moved to an empty seat and I had an open seat. All was well and I enjoyed the flight without a toddler all over my space. I was happy and the family was happy. I talked with the Father who was so glad that I offered my seat so that his wife could sit next to them.

My point is the OP could have asked to be reseated or invest in some Noise Cancelling headphones. Sorry but if the incident is not handled at the time as in this case the flight attendant could have moved you. Even if you had taken off an noticed after 30 minutes that the infant would not quiet down you could have politely went up to the Flight attendant who could have tried to work something out.

wetrat0

I once sat near a grown man who was watching the "BYOD streaming" entertainment on his smartphone, with the sound on. I frequently see kids watching an iPad with sound on [my pet peeve is when they do this in restaurants, but also airliners], this was my first experience with a grown up. My usual approach is to politely ask them to put headphones on, but apparently many people have a complete lack of situational self awareness.

OskiBear

IME, babies in bassinets tend to be fairly quiet and maybe wake up every so often when they need to be changed or fed. Otherwise, it's not terrible.
Toddlers who maybe should know better and can be better controlled by parents (but aren't) tend to be more annoying.
If they aren't physically annoying me (kicking my seat, climbing onto me, etc), there's not much to be done.

ashill

Yeah, toddlers are a lot more difficult to control (in all places, not just airplanes). They should (and usually do) know better (so there's more that parents can and should do), but they are also at a stage where they're asserting their independence! Though we do our best (and I frankly think we do pretty well), it's a lot more work to prevent our now-four-year-old from being difficult on others than when she was three months old (her first trans-Pacific flight) to 30 months or so. But she also says please and thank you much better now than when she was three months!

wanderingstar

Wrote a long post and was logged out, so I am not going to rewrite it, but in short, as a parent, full support for adult-only flights. We have them for most services, from hotels to cruises. I have not slept on a single flight, often up to 36 hours now, because of someone's screaming child or neglect of the child. I wouldn't ask the airline for compensation, but for long, international flights, yes, there should be adult-only flights.

I have seen some truly bad parenting in the sky, some of which were I on the ground, I might have called CPS for, and since I don't fly unmedicated, since I am in a state of high anxiety in the air (claustrophobia), other peoples' screaming kids, who definitely can go right through sedatives and noise canceling ear phones and all ear plugs -- which only block up to 33 decibels -- I would pay good money to not be kept up for sometimes two days by a chorus of shrieking babies or young kids who aren't mine.

I have lost so much vacation time after being kept up on long, international flights and having to sleep, thanks to airlines not offering this basic option.

I'd even take a sound-proof wall in the plane or something, or a second floor.

I have had perhaps two flights out of the past twelve where kids and babies didn't keep me awake all night and also didn't totally cancel out the effects of anti-anxiety medication for flights and cause massive stress and a loss of vacation time too. 90% of the time, parents slept through their screaming kids while every one else in the plane sat angrily staring at one another at 3am.

wanderingstar

Also, when my child was little, he was extremely prone to motion sickness and took OTC dramamine to fly, drive, or take a row boat, or else he would throw up. I personally don't recall him even being awake on a single flight. Some kids are more quiet than others on planes for all kinds of reasons, but a lot of what I see is parents who seem oblivious to their kids' needs, let alone basic courtesy to others. Babies are usually better than toddlers, but I have seen a baby scream for six hours on a flight as parents slept next to her, without disruption to their sleep. People were desperate though, since that flight left at 12:30am and was a 17-hour flight. Several people asked for flight attendants to please wake the couple up.

beachfan

Babies cry, fact of life. The parents can try to quiet them,but far from 100% successful.

Help me understand why a parent can’t keep their 4 year old from kicking my seat back 4-5 times per minute. This is where I worry I’ll get into a fight with a parent, because I have almost never heard the parent admonish the child for that. My wife will speak directly to the child after the third kick.

eponymous_coward

This isn't a particularly viable model for many longhaul international destinations that get 1x daily service, and need every passenger down the back they can get their hands on. "No families, all passengers must be over 18 for at least one flight a day" is basically "cancel the service" for a lot of destinations.

I see we're all well into FlyerTalk Rant Topic That We Have Opinions On And Has Been Done To Death #425, Kids On Planes. Coming up next, Topic #837, Coach Passengers Using The First Class Restroom...

codex57

These are all so patently stupid that this thread should really just be deleted.

No, you can't gag a child. Kids cry. Let me gag you for tapping your feet or anything else I might get bugged about you.

Deny them boarding for what?

Can talk to them, but what if they can't do anything? Maybe the kid is sick, ears hurt, whatever.

There's really only one solution. Fly private. You're on public transportation. You're in an expensive part of public transportation, but it's still public. Act your age and grow up and deal with it.

Or, and I'm being somewhat facetious, here, go fly Malaysian in first as they apparently ban kids in that class. Maybe enjoy a leisurely extended swim in the ocean like the rest of Flight 370. Maybe you won't have to deal with other people anymore and can be at peace.

ijgordon

That's also why these types of threads tend to go in endless circles and eventually get shut down. @:-)