Infants in First Class
 

I have been on a couple of flights now with infants in first class. One was on AS and the baby screamed all the way from Seattle to Sacramento. AS gave me additional upgrade coupons when I complained. The other flight was on NW - MSP - SMF. That baby only cried part of the trip.

Are there any airline rules about infants/toddlers in first class? Do they vary by airline? Any strategies for dealing with this when it becomes a problem?

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AS MVP Gold, UA PremEx, HHonors Gold, Hertz Pres Circle

I just love babies (do you here my daughters, I can't wait to become a grandfather) - seldom a problem for me.

I was on ATL-HNL in coach right near the connection. Someone brought a baby along in F and he/she cried about 1/2 the flight. There were some young kids in F, too but they were well behaved from what I saw whenever the curtain parted. I am glad though that I didn't blow any miles or $$$ for F with the baby crying 1/2 the time.

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Time..... is on my side.

That's life in the First Lane. Infants have as much right to be in First as you do. In the big picture, there are many other annoying people in planes and, unfortunately, you can't ask them to get off the plane, either.

Luckily, I have not yet encountered a seriously noisy infant in front cabins but IMO, it is fairly annoying to have someone disturb peace for any amount of time on any flight.

Infants are NOT full fare paying passengers, so why should they spoil the trip for everyone else? If I pay for the privilege of a bed seat in 1-st then I seriously object to any noise which interrupts my sleep. After all if I pay a good 25 times more for that (bed-seat)privilege then why should I suffer just to be nice?

Would anyone tolerate if someone brought a ghetto blaster on board and turned it up to the same volume as an infant makes? I seriously doubt it. The person would be asked to turn it down and if he was to refuse then he'd probably be restrained and later arrested for disturbing the peace, noise pollution, etc, etc...

Noisy kids should remain in coach as they have nothing to do in business (unless they are a business accessory) nor in 1st. However, I do not blame the kids but rather their parents who should have more respect for their fellow premium travellers. Bringing a noisy infant into a premium cabin just shows arrogance and disrespect since most passengers there travel on business and need to be well rested for their upcoming trade meetings.

P.S. I did not mean to offend anyone with my opinion. If I did then I apologise in advance but will still stick to my views.

Odds are that Greytop is a single person and not a parent of an infant or toddler. I've flown several times with my son when he was between 1 year and 2 years old. Fortunately he was well behaved and didn't make a fuss. We flew FC each time. As far as I'm concerned he has equal right to fly in FC as an adult. Trust me when I say that we parents are embarrassed and frustrated when our kids bother other passengers as we know what how they feel. I used to get annoyed at crying babies while flying until my son was born. Now it's mere empathy for those parents having to deal with a fussy baby. An FA showed us a miracle pacifier, Cheerios! Amazing how some Cheerios will calm a young child.
I'd rather have a crying baby on board than a drunk adult insulting FAs or freaking out and trying to crash a plane.

Arrogance! Disrespect! I usually hold my temper but my god are you a condescending SOB Spider! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mad.gif

Just because a parent has a child with him/her requires that we sit in coach?! True that young children don't pay full fare but they still have to pay for a seat, generally between 50% and 75%, which amounts to quite a bit if flying internationally.

Additionally,

The comparison between a crying baby and a ghetto blaster is so off base.

A kid with a ghetto blaster would be "controllable." A baby is NOT.

Here we go again. Being rich or a businessperson or an airline elite doesn't exempt you completely from being a member of the human race and suffering through some of life's many annoyances and inconveniences. Charter a private jet if you want to completely escape from the riff-raff.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/000912.html

I don't like loud voices in airplanes either. That's why I get annoyed when people hold business conferences during red-eyes or yell into their cell phones before pull-back from the gate.

I had three or four experiences with infants and very young children in December. On one redeye flight I was in F on a 737, with a crying infant in the second row of Y behind me. I was annoyed at first, but then I had a scotch and the engines started - within 10 minutes s/he was background noise. On another flight in Y a four-year-old howled. When the seatbelt light went off her mother took her back to the rear galley/lav area and kept her there until she quieted. I also saw 5 or 6 infants and small children in Y and C on various flights who were no worse than the rest of the pax and whose presence I quickly forgot about.

Next month I am taking my 2-1/2 year old son on his first flight (pessimists: avoid UA 2833 PDX-LAX-PSP on February 9). I have no idea how he will react, but I think he'll be fine -- because I've told him in advance what he'll see on his first flight.

How have other parents prepared children for their first flight?

I should have added that he and I are paying the same fare for the flight, and when it's over he will have only 999,000 miles to go for his Million Mile status. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I like kids as well, and I try to be tolerant, but I do wish there were preferred seating areas for families with small kids. Alternatively, perhaps a code (which the courts would probably deem discriminatory) could indicate where small kids were seated so that an appropriate seat request could be made.

On SQ 8198, CHC-SIN, 1 Jan, there were three families with 6 kids packed into 3 center rows. Two kids proved to be catalysts for the rest. Suffice it to say that the experience was slightly less than pleasant for those seated nearby on the 10+ flight. Several of us wished that we could have known about the proximity of the families a priori and thus request different seating. On a quick LH trip over the next two days BKK-FRA-BKK, there was only one screamer on each flight, but gratefully displaced from my location by over 5 rows each time. On Fri, 5 Jan, on UA from BKK-NRT it was peacefully quiet, but on UA 800 NRT-JFK a family sat across the aisle, upstairs business, two and three rows ahead of me (I was in 15G). The mother did nothing to alleviate a fight, which lasted from mid-Aleutians to nearly Lake Ontario, between her teenage son and young daughter.

Regarding strategies, I just move if I can. On the last flight, I was so tired that I just popped in my Sony NC-10 noise-canceling headphones, and collapsed in my seat... too lazy to move downstairs. However, on the preceding flights I looked for reasonable alternative seating to no avail. In the good old days, I would request the smoking section (I do not smoke) if I saw a bunch of kids in the departure area. Alas, that option has drifted away like smoke in a breeze...

While I think that it is every parent's choice to sit in first or coach with their infant, my husband and I choose not to. Our son is an amazing flyer at 8 months and does not fuss much at all, but we would rather sit all in a row of 3 seats so he can use his carrier and in first/business you don't have that choice. Also, logistics aside, I have seen how some "respectable business people" treat parents and children in first and I can't subject myself or my child to that. There seems to be a lot of ill will when it comes to children in any class on the plane, but in first I have seen it reach a whole new ugly level. Besides, he flew in first for 6 months incognito when I was pregnant :-).

Hey folks - roll of the dice! I just returned from London on US Airways in Envoy(Business)class - 3 kids all under 5 yo, pretty well behaved but noisy every once in awhile, but with the headphones, movies, and a double martini they just faded out. I chatted with the FA's and the ENTIRE family of 5 where on full fare Envoy tickets - 5-6K per!

MG