rickg523

OP said the baby made noise for an hour and a half during the whole 14 hour flight. I didn't take that to mean it was all at once.
But enough. I hope the return trip is more pleasant.

kaka

BA sold a child/infant ticket.
BA sold an adult ticket.
if the kid threatened his safety he should contact the crew and crew should take action.
if the adult threatened anyone else's safety he should be notified to the crew and crew should take action.

if he was "just merely rude" then it shows his class.
if parents "simply allowed" kid to disturb the whole cabin without doing anything within the cabin, then it shows their class.
if the kid doesnt shut up... in my household it means someone will be grounded next time round.

SQTraveller

Crying babies are annoying on flights full stop but so are loud drunk people.
People choose to drink, babies don't choose to cry.

My view is that as long as parents are engaging with their baby, I'm ok with it.
What I can't stand is when parents put on their noise cancellation headphones and it ends up being the cabin crew who have to look after the children.

Adstring

As someone who also travels with an 18 month old, I would remind him that he's on public transport and that if he needs to be certain of complete silence, he should have his people procure a private jet.

Don't have the resources?...Then quit moaning and be grateful you are not down the back!

LondonElite

Gig103

I think hearing some vulgarity on public transport is no worse than hearing a crying baby on public transport. You give some, you take some; if swearing 'ruined' your first class experience, he's probably somewhere talking about an infant 'ruining' his first class experience.

corporate-wage-slave

Few things pull the almighty strings of FTers more than the issue of crying babies in the First cabin. Occasionally the Club World Cabin. Somehow this issue doesn't arise in WTP or WT cabins. I am not sure why. The swearing aspect distinguishes this thread from the many other threads in this sphere, but I would be surprised if we don't drift into the usual routines here of "it's public transport" versus "parents don't sort out their kids". For me, my Shure 535 earphones takes 35 of the 80 dB away, and playing some music can deal with the other 45 - though I guess that Zen like approach is another trope.

What I would say though is that while the poor mite may well have had 90 minutes of upset, to a passenger annoyed by the crying, unable to sleep, unable to concentrate (and that's why babies cry), it may have felt a lot, lot longer. I suspect their version would be - incorrectly - that the baby cried all flight long. Not that it justifies the swearing, but the cabin crew were probably correct that the best way to diffuse the situation is to ignore it. I doubt that a confrontation would have helped, but letting off steam in the way the man did may have helped him. Alternatively he could have let off steam in a Flyertalk thread.....

One other feature which isn't much mentioned is distance. A baby crying can be 120 dB, and that's painful. At one metre that will be 100 dB, and at 4 metres about 90 dB. Decibels work on a logarithmic scale, since our ears do too. So that's why it is worse in aircraft than anywhere else due to the fact we're packed in like sardines, and only marginally less so in First. I once travelled with a very young mother, perhaps still a teenager, but as soon her baby started to cry she was off to the galley with the baby, where the cabin crew also managed to distract away some of the upset. I think the whole CW cabin appreciated her efforts, even though it wasn't a perfect solution. Adding a few more metres to the distance between the baby and other passengers makes a big difference to the situation.

Worcester

I sat next to a woman and a small infant who was rather fractious and started howling just after take off. I ended up playing peek-a-boo with the baby who quickly calmed down had a feed and promptly fell asleep for most of the flight.

If you want to have less crying babies, stressing out the parent(s) is hardly the way to go about it as children pick up on their parent's stress.

A little human kindness and empathy goes a long way.

origin

Swearing is always unnecessary in any environment.

But we dont know the other persons side of the story, they might be anxious of what they are flying into.

I am not even sure the too situations are related.

We dont know what words are used either.

Ldnn1

TabTraveller

Phil the Flyer

Crofton138

+1

thecoogan

thecoogan