PhDeac
PM a mod to cement your internet status forever
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
- Messages
- 155,325
- Reaction score
- 22,327
Agree with most of your post. I wasn't saying don't bring children on a flight, but if you do, you better be able to control your kids. Obviously you, Chic, etc have a good handle on being a parent. It's the parents that freak out if someone asks them to have their child stop kicking the back of the seat. If someone asked my parent to do this when I was a kid I would have been mortified and in big trouble with my parents. I flew a lot when I was a kid and I always had strangers complementing my parents on how I acted. They laid down the law pretty early on and taught me the right way to act in a public setting. Where there occasions when I acted up, of course, but you can be sure I heard about it right away from my parents and shaped up pretty quick. There are times when it seems like people are practically begging parents to control their kids and the parents don't care that their child is running around terrorizing everyone else in a shared space.
The issue with lackluster parents applies to flying, but could really be applied to a whole bunch of other situation, restaurants, malls, really any public place now a days.
I'd love to see numbers on the bolded part of your post. I might try and research that when I have a little more time this afternoon. Around holiday times there are a ton of parents on flights, but during other times in the year, especially during the week there are hardly any parents on flights. I don't know if families are single-handily subsidizing the airline industry.
I don't know the stats, Green. I do know that airlines have the option of either following FAA recommendations and mandating infants sit in their own seat or letting infants lapsit and they do the latter because doing the former would price out flying for some young families. I think in some respects, airlines may prefer having children on planes because a toddler weighs significantly less than an adult in the same seat.
You guys are just foolish. If you sit in coach, you get to sit with the unwashed masses (which includes kids). First class has rules about age for this reason. If you are such a fucking tool that you are going to yell at someone's 15 month old for kicking your seat, I hope die alone sucking your thumb. Get a life or a job that affords you the luxury of a first class ticket.
What are the age rules? I flew first class with my wife and son when he was 14 months and I sat beside a 6 or 7 year old girl who was traveling by herself who definitely looked like she had done it before. I couldn't imagine sending a child that age by herself and not putting her in first class.