But as you see it’s been Photo-shopped - something the Mail is well known for, and sometimes not very successfully.
Well you don’t have to molest a child to cause problems. A man could open his zipper, play with himself, put his hands down his pants, make suggestive or lewed comments.
I’m a 45 year old male, and all my life, kids just love me. They come over and start talking to me.
It astonishes me the amount of kids that must be lonely for some sort of male attention. Even when I was younger, I got it.
I was on a plane once and I had the window seat and the little kid (about 5) she says “I wanted to sit next to the window so I can see.” The mother said “no, you can’t.” So I offered to change places with the little girl. The mother said, “thanks,” and somehow I wound up in the middle between the two. I hate the middle seat.
I"m always shocked by the number of parents that will thank me for talking to their kids. There was a kid on the bus doing his “times tables,” and he asked me to help. After about 20 minutes I got up to get off and his mother says, “Thank you so much for helping, he just never shuts up does he?”
The ad I’m seeing at the bottom of the thread says:
Sheesh.
Except sex discrimination suits in the UK aren’t based on common law torts; they’re based on the The Sex Discrimination Act 1975.
Section 29 of the Act prohibits discrimination in the provision of goods and services offered to the public. Sub-section 29(2)(f) states that includes the provision of “facilities for transport or travel”, which would seem to apply to this case.
Section 66 of the Act provides that a claim for sexual discrimination contrary to the Act may be brought in the County Courts (of England & Wales) or the Sheriff’s Court (in Scotland). It also provides that damages can be given for injury to feelings, even without any other claim for damages:
Now, whether the passenger can prove his case to the extent required by the statute is another matter, and something I know nothing about. But on the face of it, his claim looks like it comes within the scope of the Act.
(Oh, and although the various provisions of the Act refer to discrimination against women, s. 2 of the Act provides that all of the provisions also apply to men.)
As usual, this post is not intended as legal advice, but simply to comment on a matter of public interest.
Thanks for this information.
I figured there had to be a way for a normal person to sue alleging sex discrimination.
So all of the lucky female passengers get to sit next to little kids. Gee, thanks!:rolleyes:
Well, if you talked dirty and flashed 'em the old “Mrs. Sloacum”, this wouldn’t happen, now would it?
Ha! I skipped ahead to that single sentence and found that it contains three massive typos *besides *“teutonic plates.” “Domican Republic,” “betwen,” and “suspceptibile.”
Bravo.
I just wanted to clarify a small point here about unaccompanied minors. My children flew as unaccompanied minors back and forth between Guam and Kansas and Kansas and South Carolina for many years, the last of which was 2006 so policies may have changed slightly since then.
When a child is flying unaccompanied up to a certain age there is a crew member “assigned” to them who sits with them (or very near them) and checks on them throughout the flight. After a certain age, I am not certain maybe 7 or 8? Their assigned crew member meets them at the gate (or at security since 2001 when non-ticketed individuals were no longer allowed through security to get to the gate) gets them settled in, then escorts them off the flight and through the gate to meet whoever is picking them up. They don’t release the kids until id of whoever is picking them up has been verified.
In a sense they are running a child-minding service as far as unaccompanied minors goes, but for that service we parents (or whoever is paying for the tickets) pay a significant fee. I think the last time it was around $95 each way in addition to the full-fare ticket prices (no discounts allowed for unaccompanied minors on the airlines we used). So yes, I do expect child-minding when the parent (or whoever) contracts and pays for that aspect.
Great. Just when I get a nice buffer between me and the kid, they make us switch spaces because as a woman I’m supposed to just love children?
This sucks for women, men, and children.
Too bad jet planes don’t have roof racks for kids the way SUVs do.
For this specific case I don’t see why the kid wasn’t the one being moved anyhow. I hope the guy wins as the phobia this policy exemplifies needs to be controlled.
I’d say that it could cause some very missed opportunities for the kid.
Many years ago, my uncle was working out in Ohio, and paid to fly me out (may have been via miles though) to visit him. I was probably about 11 or so. I was upgraded to first class (a waste in some respects), and was seated next to the science adviser for President Carter. We had a great (from my perspective, his may have been different) conversation about science topics the entire way from Boston to Ohio. It furthered my interest in science for many years after that.
It’s a shame that they would assume that all men must be dangerous, even in such a public place.
My guess is that the plane was full, or nearly full, and there were no vacant seats with at least one man sitting next to it. The flight attendants did what was easiest.
So in retrospect, it was worth enduring a bit of under-the-blanket ball tickling!
I’d like to point out, again, that this story is in the Mail and it’s very likely that British Airways do NOT have such a policy at all. It’s nowhere on their website or anywhere online and a friend of mine who works for BA thought I was crazy for asking her.
None of you should be angry or offended or anything like that, except at the Mail for lying.
According to the story, the kid’s parents were on the plane too, seated elsewhere, so he wasn’t ‘unaccompanied’, he was seated separately for some reason.
Maybe the kid’s a little prick, and the parents had him put at the opposite end of the plane to give themselves a break. Or perhaps he was one of those airplane boy whores I’ve heard so much about. 
What would they have done if the flight was all men. We’re not leaving until a man gets off now.
There is a Wiki page about this that refers prior incidents of men being told to sit elsewhere dating back to 2001. According to the story, in one instance the future Lord Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was asked to move.
And Quantas and Air New Zealand allegedly have similar policies.
I never said he was unaccompanied. The only person who did was a woman from Kidscape who’s - considering her job - embarrassingly clueless about the policies for kids travelling unaccompanied. She suggests that:
Which is exactly what BA already do. Well, that plus several other rules regarding children travelling alone. The kid can’t just rock up to the airport without an adult and be treated like any other passenger.
In this case, with the parents travelling too, the kid would have been seated seperately because you have no guarantee that you’ll be seated next to the people you book your tickets with. The parents wouldn’t have been able to request that he sit far away from them unless they were flying in different classes. Generally staff will try to move the child next to his parents.
A policy that refused to seat children next to men would be utterly illegal in the UK and I’m 99.99 percent certain that either the Mail or this litigious man made the policy up.
In fact, I’d bet about a million quid that his wife was sitting in the bulkhead seat.
That seat does have more space. However, it’s also the seat where the passenger might be required to help open the emergency doors, so the airline staff always want a fairly strong male sitting there. I was once travelling with my daughter who, as an infant, wasn’t entitled to her own seat, and was relieved to have the bulkhead where we had more space, but I got moved to a regular tiny seat because I wouldn’t have been suitable for that space. 
A strong-looking man was given the bulkhead seat instead.
The Mail should check its facts before it publishes a story, but it pretty much never does.