Subject to discuss. Jet Blue was on on hold on a taxiway for 30 minutes which exceeded a 3 year old’s bladder. Article. The rules of operating aircraft are there for a reason. They exist to protect customers and crew. But the more absolute a rule is enforced the greater the likelihood it exceeds it’s intended purpose.
I would consider the pain of a full bladder to be problematic both for the individual and the passengers around that individual if things should go south. It would seem to me that the flight attendant could have worked with the passenger (and the captain) to help her rather than work against the passenger and cause a most unpleasant situation for all the passengers on the plane.
For debate, could the airline have dealt with this better?
My thoughts, the plane can’t move quickly once it’s away from the gate. There is too much mass involved for sudden movements unless the pilot stands on the brakes and runs the engines up. Taking the little girl to the toilet was an option that could be coordinated with the crew. Option 2 would be to provide an absorbent material to the child to be tucked into her undies. They make such products now so it’s not rocket science for airlines to stock them.
Link said I had to answer a question to read after the second sentence. No thank you.
The question to me (whitout reading the article) is when did mom last take her to the bathroom. Should have been right as boarding started then a 30 min wait would be no big deal. She also could have worn pull ups while traveling. Never had a problem with our kids on many many flights.
I don’t know - while I’ve had toddlers, and totally get that they are not always on top of their bathroom habits, I can’t imagine getting on a plane without making them use the toilet first, for this exact reason. I know they will sometimes fight and cry and tantrum against it, but that’s how it is with kids. And if you don’t want to deal with that, put a diaper on them.
I don’t see what JetBlue could have done without causing all kinds of trouble. The rule of no movement in the cabin seems like a good safety rule. And if they had let her go, it would have caused tremendous trouble - not just is delaying the plane, but all the planes behind them, and then all the flights that they delayed, etc. Its a huge domino effect, and even a ten minute delay so this kid could use the potty could have stacked quickly into a series of delays for other flights.
It seems to be pretty selfish of this woman to demand special treatment for a perfectly ordinary issue that people have been dealing with since the dawn of commercial air traffic. Actually, super selfish, IMO.
There needs to be some leeway for when nature calls.
I do not suffer from any particular condition (e.g. Chron’s Disease) that would necessitate an emergency bathroom break but even so I have needed emergency bathroom breaks in my life (stomach flu, something I ate…whatever).
Point being some need it because of a condition, some need it because shit happens (pun intended) and in the case of a toddler that is how they roll.
Seems to me airlines need to make rules that allow for bathroom breaks when the plane takes longer than X-amount of time to take off. When nature calls it is pretty insistent and not to be denied.
You can easily wait at the gate for some time, expecting to be allowed on the plane at any moment. The mother might have made her best guess as to when to take her daughter to the toilet, but even if only 15 minutes passed before being allowed on the plane, that’s still a total of 45 minutes. If the 30 minute wait is only counting the time the plane spent waiting (i.e. not including boarding and moving) it could be close to an hour even if the mother was as attentive as possible to her daughter.
Why do you assume a ten-minute delay is the minimum? And presumably, the cabin crew could have found out whether the plane was expected to leave in the next few minutes or not, and then either allowed the girl to use the toilet or told her “just a few more minutes”, accordingly.
Kid pees in an inappropriate place! Is the government to blame? All this and more after the break on FOXNEWS!
[Cut to commercials for gold coins, Gold Bond, and colloidal silver]
But seriously, this is one of those calls where it’s just hard to second guess. The flight attendant was in the poor position of trying to choose between the risk of two bad outcomes: the child has a little accident in her seat, or the plane starts moving and the kid may bump her head or whatever. Having the airline hand out some pads or whatever seems to me like an even worse suggestion: “Here, kid. Shove this downstairs and take your whiz. I’ll get back to you when we pass 20,000 feet.”
Seems like JetBlue remedied the situation to the mom’s satisfaction, in any case.
The plane weighs many thousands of pounds. It’s not going to suddenly jerk forward. They could be on an indefinite hold without a specific time. At what point does the crew attempt to deal with the situation? 1 hr, 2 hrs, 3 hrs?
If the crew is not capable of dealing with small problems then there is a safety issue waiting for a real problem to occur. Then what? The crew of the Asiana flight that crashed onto the runway at San Francisco tried to stop people from exiting the plane while it was on fire.
I fly for an airline. I’m not clicking through to read the full article either, but am I correct in assuming the plane was delayed in taking off? If so, it’s possible it could have received clearance for departure at any time, in which case it would be dangerous to have a person in the lavatory. That’s part of why the no-movement rule is there.
When things like this crop up I find myself wondering if there is a better way than rigidly following rules. For example, we pilots and airline employees have several ID / security badges we wear on lanyards. Woe betide you if you turn up to work without them. It’s a show stopper. Can’t get through the checkpoints, won’t be allowed out to your plane, etc.
Why?
Everyone in the company knows me. Even the TSA people know me because I go through their “Known Crew Member” checkpoint every day. What difference does it make if I don’t happen to have the silly plastic badge? Why can’t someone override that and vouch for me?
Yes, I know. That’s how a nefarious person might try to exploit the system. But still, it’s me. Nobody could impersonate me at my home airport. Maybe there could be a special rule in the case of a lost or forgotten badge that two people vouch for me, and then I have to be accompanied by other cleared people (ie, members of my crew) the rest of the day.
So I propose this scenario as a counter-question to the OP. I think some discretion is possible in the lost badge scenario. Should the rule be relaxed as I describe, or should it be rigidly adhered to?
It’s tough to travel with toddlers in the best of circumstances. Airline flight is unpredictable, and even with good potty training, I’m not sure traveling without some pull-ups just in case is the best decision. While the parent may have thought if takeoff happened on time, the child could have gone to the bathroom once the seatbelt signs were off - well, sometimes the flight is rough and the passengers are not allowed out of their seats for the entire flight. What then? Even if the plane had taken off on time, child would still have had to pee in her seat.
I’ve seen flight attendants who were jostled and had to hold on to seats or overhead bins as a plane is taxiing. I assume that you think my observations must be wrong because inertia? Which is more apt to be off here, what I actually have seen with my own eyes or your understanding of physics?
With your silly questions, are you suggesting that flight attendants allow EVERY movement while on the taxiway? Or maybe they should make passengers wait 5 seconds, or maybe 10, tops? What I’m saying is that your insinuations that passenger injury is impossible on the taxiway because planes are large is not reasonable, and it is also not reasonable to second-guess a flight attendant’s interest in safety because a young child shockingly, and perhaps for the first time in aviation history, had a little accident.
I don’t have a damn clue what you’re trying to say here.
So, somebody has a bladder emergency. Does that trump safety? Should the flight crew risk getting written-up by ignoring the regulation just this once? Call the tower and pull out of line for the 5 minutes or so, possibly losing their departure slot? Stop on the taxiway and hold the entire line? Or tell the parent to ask the child to hold it until they are airborne in another 10-15 minutes?
I understand a child having to go to the restroom, but I think this is a case of a mother blaming her inability to manage her child on others.
I got food poisoning from a fish meal provided by the airline in first class while hanging around in just such a situation. Did they make me throw up/shit convulsively all over everything and everyone? No, they allowed me to run for the head. My mother, who was not there, had nothing to do with the expulsive nature of my bodily functions.
JetBlue has apologized for the incident and said that the crew will be instructed in sensitivity to passenger need. I suspect that the kid could have been allowed to go to the toilet as long as the plane was not moving without the FAA leveling any sanctions against the crew or airline.
(If the plane were rolling along the approaches, the need to sit would be clear. Sitting at a stop while other traffic lands and departs would seem to permit a bit of leeway.)
Agreed. Similar example: where I live there are strict laws about texting and driving which were intentionally formulated in such a way that any kind of cell phone use at any time by a driver not actually parked is illegal. This means, say, just picking up your cell phone while stopped at a traffic light to check the time is illegal. In fact, someone was charged a while back for doing nothing more than picking a phone up off the floor while stopped at a light and chucking it on the passenger seat. Laws tend to be written in that sort of absolutist way because it makes enforcement easy, not because it makes any damn sense.
Furthermore, you have flight attendants walking up and down the aisles during all those times that passengers are obligated to be seated, and you have cops chatting away on their handheld cell phones (I’m certain most of those calls are personal, as I can’t imagine business calls being quite so entertaining as to cause the kinds of uproarious laughter I’ve seen). This stuff is either so dangerous that there must be no exceptions and no leeway, or it isn’t. It can’t be both.
I would argue that is an invalid analogy – an example of where rigidity is actually required. Because it open up a huge security hole with no objective accountability. Verifying a badge is a “yes” or “no” question; validating identity on the basis that one agent and someone else thinks it more or less looks like the right person isn’t. You can’t argue that all rules must be rigid just because some must be. Some rules are downright stupid even when they’re flexible!
The FAA regs have to do with movement of the airplane. During a ground stop the plane isn’t moving.
Furthermore during every ground stop I have experienced (too many BTW) the captain shuts off the engines as jet fuel isn’t cheap.
So with the plane parked with the engines off I’m not too worried about the plane moving.
I have seen many an FA that had no issues with passengers going to the restroom during this time.
I have also had meals served during long ground stops.
In general, if the parking brakes aren’t set, the aircraft is considered to be moving.
Letting someone up during a stop is a judgement call and without the full story, we don’t know whose interpretation of events to rely on here.
For example, when in the delay did the child decide she needed to pee?
Was it at the beginning of the delay? Was the aircraft sitting there with engines shutdown because the crew knew they were looking at a long delay? Send the kid to the restroom. Flight attendant was an evil witch to not let her go.
Had the engines just been cranked and the aircraft was about to enter the flow to the runway? Were they halfway to the runway and even the F/A was about to buckle in? Kid needs to stay in her seat and the mother is a self-important moron.
Since from personal experience I know that most passengers seem to pack their brains in a suitcase when they fly because they don’t think they will need them, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the flight crew’s decision that that wasn’t an appropriate time for the child to be up and about the cabin.
You don’t appear to understand the difference between a taxiway and the verb taxiing. When a plane is pushed back from a gate it’s attached to a tug which can jerk a plane around. A plane waiting on a taxiway has to overcome the mass of the plane using it’s engines. It’s the difference between a geared vehicle pushing the plane and a fan driven engine.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying:rolleyes: Don’t use any common sense just do whateeeeever the passengers want to do.
A plane sitting on a taxiway waiting to take off is not moving and if it does move it’s not a rocket ship. What a crew is capable of doing is communicating a minor situation to the captain who then has the discretion of dealing with it.