CrazyCelt

LOL! I think the FAs should have been more helpful and perhaps creative... (Maybe the threat of incarceration of the entire family with the animals in the very cold below decks area - hehehe!)

But I'd heard about booking two EC seats, and privately didn't actually believe you could do that... Do all airlines do this?

Yoshi212

I think the parents should have been more proactive. Once the OP and the Crew both made contact about the problem the parents should be embarrassed enough to get their kids inline.

As for selling 2 seats to 1 person: I'm sure not all airlines do this but Many do. Swiss, BA, United (Continental) are just a few examples of airlines that will do this. Domestically SouthWest have a rather generous program for this. It is similar in a way to buying a seat for a large musical instrument. It is suggested/practically mandatory that you contact the airline to make sure they put remarks in the PNR about the seats being for 1 person and when checking in & boarding both seats are done.

747FC

This has happened to me on a much shorter flight. When I asked the mother to control her child, the child in the mother came out. Obviously, what genes come around, go around...

iF this happens to me again, I think rather than engage in any kind of conflict situation, I will merely offer the child a monetary reward for not kicking me. Maybe a few Won would go a long way to make a flight more peaceful?

sobay_terp

If I had a 14 hour transpacific flight with this going on behind me, I would have asked the mother and kids to switch rows, unless that was an inferior row.

PushingTin

Endearing yourself with the people in front of you. This goes on until they are in the bulkhead row.

Though, letting them pass and then kicking the back of their seats does have a certain poetry.

There have been threads about 'spare' seats, but it has to be set up so that they don't scatter the seats, and if they do, you can get some compensation.

My buddy flies between AUS-NZ and for their frequent fliers they leave the middle open. I forget what they call it.

abraxis

I concur with the view that it's not so much the brats but the brat's parents that are to blame for this bad behaviour.

I fly to Singapore (via HKG) on a regular basis and I can't tell you how often I'm surrounded by car alarms when I'm in Y. When I'm in Y, I usually wind up in the bulkhead row, which is where a lot of the airlines move families with infants. Besides being the beneficiaries of a constructive upgrade, I'd say most of them are pretty good with their kids. But the 15% who are not make it a pain both for the back of C and the front of Y.

There was one time I was in C on NH and an entire family surrounded me. Mom, Dad and two boys. They proceeded to keep themselves occupied for the entire flight, not so much as uttering a peep. It's all about upbringing.

weero

Actually LH is the only airline I know who makes a serious and credible effort in telling children off and admonishing parents to administrate and control what they produced. And I appreciate it very much. Even the Japanese carriers are not as disciplined as LH.

And while ADD and just generally terrible kids sporadically occur anywhere, they are produced and pampered in Asia. If someone lets their brats scream around in the lounge or provides their 2 year old with a blaring DVD player and no headphones (as did a {ethnic reference removed by moderator - unnecessary to make poster's point} family recently in the SEN lounge on VIE), they are regarded as enormous sphincters.
But here people do this in concerts, cinemas, lectures ... why should a child that can barely grunt a few words not operate a cell phone during a late night movie screening? After all the whole world has to gyro around the terminally spoiled heir.

So is it a surprise that this happened on that route and that carrier and that neither management nor FAs could care one dime? Absolutely not.
Japan is the one glorious exception indeed.

WindowSeat123

Some people don't know shame or embarrassment even if it is written on their foreheads. In such cases, only more stern measures will suffice. The airline should blacklist disruptive passengers to prevent them flying on them, for instance.

whimike

Reminds me of a crazy flight I had on Thai Airways in first class on their A380. A family took up half the cabin, and shortly after takeoff the kids started jumping from the top of front seats into the seats behind them, all the while screaming and making a scene. It looked like a circus. The parents did nothing at all. The elderly male purser felt so bad for the rest of the passengers that he was constantly apologizing to everybody and even sat down with one of the kids to feed them their dinner.

HMO

I believe OP only decided to post her problem here because all the (bad) publicity Korean Air is receiving because of Heather Cho's nut-rage...

Kat007

They obviously didn`t care in two lounges at FRA. When I approached the staff with my complaint, they said they had to be diplomatic about it not to disturb the disturbing the whole lounge {ethnic reference removed by moderator - unnecessary to make poster's point} family. After that, I left the lounge in B, but the family did the "tour d`lounge" and somehow got to A before me.

Then, after patiently waiting for LH to take care of the situation, I had to police the family myself.

chavala

After being ignored by the parents and alerting the FA's, this is exactly what I would have done. I've told kids to shut the F up in lounges, theaters and airplanes, (without witnesses) and it usually scares them into submission

There is a comedy with a scene of a pax having his seat kicked by a kid and he turns around and threatens him with a pencil..... can't think of the film right now, but it definitely hit home!

CGRA

Why is so ridiculous to buy an extra seat for extra comfort ?

FlyingUnderTheRadar

I was once on a flight with kicking babies in arms. Not one but two. In the end we learned that it was against FAA rules to have two babies in arms in the same row - not enough O2 masks. Further, the FA can only do so much. And unless there are other places to sit your are pretty much screwed.

However, there is a final option - tell the parents that after the next kick you will be informing the pilot that you have been assaulted and request that the plane to met by Airport Police as you will be filing charges against them. If that does not get their attention nothing will.

84fiero

For some reason my wife is a magnet for obnoxious children of all sorts - seat kickers, screamers, loud devices with no headphones, etc. Seems to happen more often when I'm travelling with her than when I'm solo - and almost invariably the offending child is right behind her on the plane at the beginning. Sometimes the parent(s) make an effort to correct it but too often they just ignore it or get defensive about the behavior.

It's not only travelling. Last year we took our teenager to a very small movie theater to watch Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises. There were two showings - one with English audio and the other in the original Japanese with English subtitles. We deliberately chose the Japanese showing because our daughter has been learning Japanese for a few years and the wife and I don't mind reading subtitles.

Well one mother brought in two toddlers - neither apparently able to read, or to read well enough to handle subtitles. Presumably she didn't notice it was the Japanese showing. So the mom begins reading each subtitle to them - loudly. After being asked not to by staff, she stopped that but then the kids periodically would loudly complain they were bored and wanted to leave. They did end up leaving early.