Who among us hasn’t been trapped on an airplane with a howling baby or a loudmouth 4-year-old who thinks the plane is his playground? So maybe it won’t come as a surprise to you that a new survey says most travelers would be just fine and/or dandy with having a families-only section on flights.
The survey, conducted by fare-comparison site Skyscanner, says around 60% of travelers polled would be in favor of putting families with young children all in one section of the flight, and around 20% said they’d like the option of flying on a child-free flight.
While this might sound like a good idea to weary grown-up passengers, creating these families-only sections could be a logistical nightmare. One aviation consultant explains to USA Today that there’s “no way an airline can allocate seating capacity to families,” because airlines “don’t have any idea” before check-in how many families will be on a flight.
Of course, you know the airlines would just see a families-only section or kid-free flight as an opportunity to squeeze travelers for more ancillary fees. Want to sit in the seat farthest away from the kids? That’ll be a fee. Need earplugs because you got stuck next to the kids section? Oh, here you are. That’ll be five dollars.
What do you think? Is there any way a families-only section could be worked out in a reasonable fashion?
Over half of fliers would limit where kids can sit on planes [USA Today]
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I’d gladly pay more to fly on a child-free flight. Not having a screaming child for several hours is more than worth it.
I’ve been on plenty of flights with crying babies, but they mostly seem to quiet down after a while. I feel more sorry for the parents than anything because I imagine it is just as frustrating for them as it is for the other passengers.
What has annoyed me the most was when on a red eye flight, the woman in the seat in front of mine decided to spray perfume on near the beginning of the flight. I’m sure the entire cabin could smell it for the entirety of our trip. I found that more offensive than any whining infant.
I would probably take advantage of it if it was offered, but most of the time, the kids I encounter on flights really aren’t that bad. It’s the parents who fail to exercise any common sense and take precautions to keep their kids occupied and calm that drive me nuts. If you bring some stuff for your kids to do, most of them will settle in, watch a DVD or read a book or something. That said, if your kid does start trying to use the overhead bins as a jungle gym or start running up and down the aisles, don’t react with some giggling and “Oh, isn’t he cute!” or “Well, he’s bored!” I get that kids get bored, but that doesn’t mean it’s cool to let them run wild, especially in a space that’s as enclosed as a plane (or a train, or a bus). Personally, though, if I see that a parent is doing everything they can to make sure their kid behaves appropriately, but it’s just not working, I’m more likely to understand than if they’re just out to lunch and pretending that nothing’s happening. A simple, “I’m sorry he’s acting up,” if you and your kid are sitting next to me goes a long way, too.
One of the most horrific experiences I ever had was a flight from Osaka to Detroit (about 14 hours) sitting next to two kids, probably aged four and six, whose accompanying parent brought nothing to keep them occupied but one comic book each. That was it. No crayons, no Gameboy, no nothing. As one might expect, the kids were restless and irritable within an hour, and it just went downhill from there. In that case, I don’t blame the kids, but the parent. This was a flight that left Osaka at around noon, and it’s thirteen plus hours- why in the world wouldn’t you bring at least some paper and crayons for your kids? Of course they’re going to get bored and whiny and start crying.
So why do those of us who do not have a particularly fussy baby or who have well behaved children have to put up with the screaming infants that aren’t ours?
yeah, thats why I think if they were to do it, they should make it optional.
I’m surprised no one’s suggested this yet …
You can do “family-friendly” seating just fine, if you follow the Southwest Airlines “open seating” model. Just designate a portion of the seating (back, front, whatever), then let families board first into that section. Then everyone else can self-select to sit close to or away from the families, depending on their comfort level.
Speaking as someone who flies alone on business, and occasionally with my family on vacation, I can sympathize with both sides of the debate. It’s no fun to be around a bratty kid. It’s also no fun to be the parent of a bratty kid … who, by the way, wasn’t being a brat anytime before boarding the aircraft and has chosen that particular moment to exercise their constitutional right to be a jerk in public. Yes, parents need to instill good manners; but just as adults can be ill-mannered at times, even though they know better, so can kids.
And in situations I’ve been in as a parent … I would’ve appreciated not having the disapproving looks of frequent flyer adults, when I was clearly trying to do my best to salvage the situation. Moving such folks as far away from us as possible would’ve made both of us much happier.
I seem to have an honest, motherly look. Half the business flights I’ve been on, a flight attendant has asked me to sit next to an unaccompanied minor. I was on many flights as an unaccompanied minor and I remember what it was like. The kids are no trouble, but then again I make every effort to make sure they are comfortable, supervised, and entertained, and that they understand where and how they are to disembark and make their connecting flight. Since I usually schedule long layovers I am frequently available to help them get to their next gate. (The flight attendants are not always able to dedicate themselves to making sure a kid gets situated.) I’ve helped an ill American child get treatment in a European airport. I think of it as the duty every adult owes every child.
I frequently notice parents who are too wrapped up in their own heads to pay attention to their kids and make sure they’re OK, or who scream at them and even slap them on board. I’ve taken some of these kids in hand and read them stories from my e-book reader, or just talked to them. I can’t do much with babies, but I can do what I can do with kids old enough to socialize. Parents need to parent, that’s all.
Good for you! I’ve also held babies so mom could get something out of the diaper bag, or just to try to help with the crying. I’ve talked to kids, and I’ve complimented parents who are obviously doing a great job.
Those of us who don’t have kids are always seen in these debates as horrible child-hating ogres, but it’s not the case (for most of us anyway). But it IS frustrating to see a parent just shrug and say “Oh, well. Kids… you can’t control ‘em. Or worse yet, just ignore the kids. An airplane is not the time to practice enforcing the “I’m not going to give them attention when they act out, because that’s what they want” parenting trick you read about in Family Circle.
Personally, I hate riding in planes with smug assholes who think they are the only ones in the world.
Really? Do smug assholes act up, scream, cry, smell, spill things, and kick your seat?
Usually smug assholes keep to themselves and don’t bother others. They usually just complain about it later or to themselves.
Although, sometimes they may say something VERY smug like, “Could you please not change your kids diaper next to me” or “Could you have your kid stop kicking the back of my chair”
“Jeffrey, Jeffrey, stop it Jeffrey! “No Jeffrey, don’t do that!” “Leave that man alone, Jeffrey!” “Jeffrey, Jeffrey”- One of Billy Cosby best comidic routines about a kid on a airplane
LOL “Five minutes before the plane landed, Jeffrey fell asleep. Grown people took great delight as they left the plane in waking Jeffrey up. ‘GOODBYE JEFFREY!’ ‘WAAAAAAH!’”
If you liked that, you’ll love this:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17046_7-helpful-tips-child-who-made-my-flight-hell.html
I LOVE the pictures!
Yes a section for families and right next to that section anyone else who feels like they are special. Shockingly that would be the very people who want to put families in the one section.
Oh, I see what you did! A clever-turnaround of phrase to at the very end! My, you are smart, aren’t you!
Here’s how 95% of flights I’m on go.
1) Parents enters the plane with young child.
2) Adults around me start muttering and audibly complaining. Occasionally someone next to me will interrupt the book I’m reading to tell me how annoying the flight is going to be because an infant is on board.
3) We take off and the pressure change causes the infant to cry. I now have one infant crying and four adults complaining about it.
4) Within 5 or 6 minutes the infant is calm. Adults are muttering “Oh, god, finally” and continue to talk about how annoying it was.
5) The next 3 hours of flying are completely uneventful.
There are exceptions where I’ve been on planes with kids who are having a hard time with it. However, in my experience I’ve seen with far more annoying adults than young problem fliers. Let’s fix problems with the airlines before we worry about giving them more tasks to screw up.
I usually fly less than 6 times a year – but I’ve never talked to anyone on a flight and no other passengers have talked to me, either.
I think I’m lucky. It may also be because I have headphones on and listening to music/watching television.
There was only two times where a baby was close enough to me that I couldn’t hear what i was watching because of the intense screaming. And it was annoying.
But it’s mostly the older children that get on my nerves (and their parents).
I just had a very early morning flight that I was trying to sleep on, except there was a baby two rows ahead of me that screamed… the… entire… time. It drove me kinda nuts, and I wish I was close enough to tell if the parents were actually trying… then I could at least decide whether to hate them justly or give them a pass. More importantly, I wish I had packed earplugs.
Wow, Consumerist. Were you guys expecting a slow comment Wednesday? I sure hope someone addresses breastfeeding in the comments.
Rather than a family section, a kids free section is a better idea.
Please, god. *Please* make it so.
I truly resented screaming kids on airplanes until I had the fortune/misfortune of sitting directly behind a screaming baby on a flight. The airport food I ate during the layover was particularly disagreeable causing great intestinal distress (AKA gas). Every time the parents got up to change the kid’s diaper, I let loose with a massive silent-but-deadly when they passed my seat. Everyone thought it was the kid and I was able to enjoy the flight. While this changed my attitude concerning children on flights, I don’t think the other passengers were so appreciative…
You know what the real problem is? INTOLERANCE. People are so damn intolerant of anything lately. I never used to hear people bitch about this stuff. Now little tiny things bother everyone and make them all pissy and whiny. The tiniest thing goes wrong–waiting a few minutes more for a burger at the drive through, a baby whimpering (and yes I’ve seen the whimper bring out some pretty nasty behavior in people, before it ever even got to full-blown crying), and people just LOSE THEIR MINDS.
RELAX, everyone. Flying sucks; we know that. No, it isn’t fun to sit near a screaming baby, or an annoying adult, in a seat that forces you to keep your arms plastered to your sides for four hours or more at a time, but there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about it unless you charter your own plane. There’s no way you could feasibly do the family section, especially on today’s cramped planes, and like someone said earlier, the airlines would just muck it up anyway.
I wish flying would go back to what it used to be, or at least become reasonably comfortable again. I guess that will never happen, but since it won’t we’re just going to have to try and get along with each other. Or take short flights with lots of transfers. Or find a way to build a better train system, although I doubt that would get you away from the babies either.
Or how about a kids section? Like in the back area. Remove the seats, set up the area with toys, tie it off and leave them till you land. Parents could walk through and pick up their kids and leave through the back door.
I think there should be more facilities for children on board (especially for mother’s with their babies) but that doesn’t mean they should get their own section.
I have a belief thats helped me through sitting next to kids on planes: I was once a kid too, so I have no right to throw stones. I need travelers need to remember that the next time their on a flight with kids running rampant. Think about yourself back at that age, and then put up with it.
Send your kids via Fedex or UPS, and we’re all happy.
Have flights that are designated as “family-friendly” or “child-free”. Make it clear which is which at the time of booking, and allow the passenger to select.
The family-friendly flights would be priced like normal flights, and they would be open to everyone (including those traveling without children) — the caveat being that “by booking this specific flight, you agree that there may be young children on board, and you accept the consequences”.
The child-free flights would also be open to everyone, including those traveling with children, and they would be more expensive. Allowing families on these would allow them more flexibility in their schedules. The caveat for families flying on these flights would be that if your child starts to scream/stink/kick seats/etc., you get ONE warning…after that, the plane gets diverted to the nearest airport, you get booted off for being an unruly passenger, and you get to reimburse the airline for their costs (which won’t be cheap). Enforce this rule *strictly*, too, since people are paying extra not to have to put up with that crap. No being nice to you if your kid is acting up, and no tolerating it.
I just want to say thanks for using my photo (and making my son the face of kids on planes). I’m not sure how the whole kids section/no-kids section thing would work logistically, but if it could be made to work, I’d be for it. Even though my son is particularly well-behaved on airplanes, I live in mortal fear that he will make a single sound, causing another passenger to complain about the disturbance, resulting in us getting kicked off the plane and rotting in some TSA prison.
They already have a family section on planes, it’s call budget airlines. This it the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. I’d like to see an airline pull this off w/o getting sued for discrimination or something like that.
How about the airlines just note which passengers are unruly, loud and wet themselves regularly and then charge them more next time they fly in an effort to get them to travel with another airline.
Yes, with sound-proof barriers between.
Family only flights. Or business only flights. Either way, segregate the breeders from the doers.
I think this might already have happened to me. I flew on a Delta 757 or 767 (whichever one is a 3/3, I can’t remember) BOS to ATL in October 2009, and I’d chosen seats near the front on the Delta website when I booked in August. When I printed my boarding passes the night before my flight, our seats had been changed to something in the 30s. At least we were all together.
But when we boarded, I realized that 80-90 percent of all families traveling together had been placed in the rear of the plane, and there was a wall around row 30 that blocked us off from the rest of the passengers. We didn’t pay extra to pick our seats, so in the end it didn’t make a difference. It was just a little louder.
It is possible to guess at families traveling together and shuffle them around. I’m sure there’s a computer algorithm that does it.
I’m fine with it, as long as they also separate out things that bother me:
a no “snoring old fogies” section
a no fatty section
a no creepy dude watching porn on his company laptop section
a no “drunk on $6 mini-bar bottles mumbling to yourself” section
a “poor personal hygiene” section
a “constant gabbing” section
We may as well just ship everyone in boxes with air holes and sound baffles.
I would love a bloated businessmen who barely fit in their seat and hog the armrest while watching porn on their company laptop the entire flight section and an angsty teen wearing earbuds listening to hardcore copkilla rap the entire flight at level 11 volume section and then bitching for a 1/2 hour when some kid 5 rows back cries for half a minute.
Those people should be able to control themselves, yet don’t, and I see and have to sit next to them a lot more of them than illbehaved kids on flights.
My flight from Austin to Amarillo was miserable until Love field because of three fucking irritating Unaccompanied minors. It was only a 45 minute flight, but seriously those three little bastards would NOT SHUT UP. I wanted to speak up, but after reading some horror stories here on Consumerist about asking Flight Attendants for damn near anything, I really didn’t want to run the risk of having a nice chat with the TSA when we landed.
Can we please ban unaccompanied minors from flights? Or make custody agreements where parents can’t be vindictive assholes to each other by moving clear across the goddamn country?
Yes, this is a pro-consumer GOOD/GREAT idea, one which the airline industry will never act on until forced to by the feds. I am against feds messing with individuals, but when large powerful corporations are abusing their clients on a daily basis, THAT’S when feds SHOULD step in and force positive change.
Also, not only would it NOT kill them to make a sleeper section, they could charge MORE for those tickets for many flights AND pack more people into those sections!! (next time you’re in a plane look how much space is wasted above your head and in the aisle – sleepers, like they had on old fashioned trains, would use all that space up efficiently)
Stupid evil f***ing airline companies – I wish they’d all get spanked by Uncle Sam.
BTW, how many people died on 9/11?? How many people die EACH F***ING YEAR IN ALCOHOL RELATED DEATHS, INCLUDING CAR WRECKS??? Do we REALLY want our private parts groped going through checkin at airports? Is this REALLY what society as a whole wants? WTF WTF WTF?? I’m so disgusted I miss the 70s and 80s and I cant believe I just said that but it’s sadly true.
A child under 5 could reasonably fit in the overhead compartment. There is a special type of padding that is used on walls in recording studios that could be applied to the inside of the compartment to muffle the noise. Children that are older could fit in a pet crate and be stored in the luggage compartment below. Airlines could charge by the pound as an extra fee for storage, or they could provide special crates. I would suggest getting a lock though, so no one can steel it.
I flew to the US from Australia this year.
On the flight there there was a 4 year old kid in front of me. he cried a little bit but I didnt really notice
On the way back there was a grwon woman (40s) in the same row as me who got up at least 6 times, on time she stepped on me. (i much prefer to be woken up than have someone step on my nuts because the “didn’t want to bother me”)
they should have an “incosiderate people only” section, perhaps inthe cargo hold.