Again, IME only, things were different say back in the 1970s. Grandpa died in Chicago in 1978. The majority of the multitude of grandchildren and great-grandchildren lived in the Chicago metro area, or at least Illinois, so flying wasn’t necessary. But there were other grandchildren in places like Pennsylvania and Arizona. They and their parents either drove to Chicago, or skipped the funeral.
The default position back then wasn’t that children “needed” to fly on airplanes, like it seems to be today.
Yes, they should. But sometimes people are rude assholes. Sometimes those people are kids, and sometimes they are adults. Don’t you get that yet? Kids do not have a monopoly on bad behavior.
Air travel in 1978 was much more expensive (deregulation just began in 1978) than it is now. People drove more in large part because flying was not an economical option. When flying gets cheaper, more people will fly. It’s not a small difference, either - overall prices are down something like 30% over the last 30 years, and even more on high-traffic routes.
Flying is SAFER. It’s good that more people fly. If kids (and adults) are in airplanes instead of in cars, fewer of them die in accidents.
Children don’t need to fly on airplanes, they need to travel with their parents. You can’t send a 3-year-old on vacation by themselves. Since more people are flying, by extension, more children fly.
Yeah, that’s all well and good, but it doesn’t justify the earlier claims that children “need to fly” at times. Maybe to the Mayo Clinic for specialized medical treatment, but no one, child or adult, “needs” to fly to DisneyWorld or to visit Grandma somewhere.
Great! By your quiz here, I don’t inconvenience you at all. What do I win? Can I now advocate that babies shouldn’t be on planes since they’re an inconvenience* and by your definition, I don’t seem to be?
So after the whole quiz and even if we answered correctly, we still have to sit in special seating? Well, actually I don’t mind if first class will be reserved for us bitter losers. Hmm. Good idea. First class can be for the bitter losers and economy class can be for the open minded ones who don’t mind yelling and screaming babies.
*I don’t advocate and have never advocated that babies should not be on planes. This post just didn’t make much sense to me, so I thought I’d respond to it.
I agree. But here’s the thing for me. If the offender is an adult, we all know who is responsible. And if they shirk their responsibility, it’s clear they’re a jerk. Open and shut case.
But if the offender is a child, there’s often somehow a weird twist of logic that many parents use that say that the damage is not their fault. Somehow, it’s like a force of nature happened that they had no control over so why should they be responsible? (Or so the illogic goes.)
So for instance, if an adult is passing by your restaurant table and accidently spills melted velveeta cheese on your suit, if they don’t apologize and offer to pay, we would all realize that they were wrong and total jerks. No question about that.
But if a child is running around with some melted velveeta cheese and spills it on your suit, parents often come up with the most awful excuses. That’s when the “kids will be kids” and the lame shrugs with the “what can you do?” attitudes are so prevalent. And it’s less than 100% positive that most people would agree that those parents were wrong and total jerks (as witnessed by this thread.) That’s one of the reasons it’s so irritating when parents don’t control their children. The damages they cause are often considered to be a force of nature and not anyone’s responsibiilty when they’re clearly the parents’ responsibility.
Yes, but airlines don’t provide a needs based service. Since deregulation, they provide a competitive service where they are interested in more people flying. When they sell a seat for $400, they don’t care if they are selling it to a seven year old or an adult or someone who hasn’t showered this week. We allow people to move freely within our boarders (and fairly freely outside of them), using whatever legal transportation they wish, no matter what their age (provided minors have appropriate permission).
Since you don’t NEED to fly anymore than anyone else, if the presence of others disturbs you, don’t fly.
First of all, who cares what you think people need? Perhaps their opinions differ. Maybe they want their children travelling in the safest possible manner. I would much, much rather my kid travel 1500 miles in a plane than in a car, and if the price is going to be about the same and it’s faster, it would be insane to drive. Saying we don’t “need” to fly is bizarre; technically, you don’t “need” to drive either, you could take the train or walk or go by horse-drawn carriage. Flying (beyond a minimum distance, of course) is the safest and most economical choice.
And anyway, what’s your proposed solution if the family does, in fact, need to get from Buffalo to Los Angeles in less than three days? What if they need to go to London or Bangalore? It’s hard to drive to India from here.
I would have to ask for a cite; who in the thread is saying parents shouldn’t take responsibility for what their kids do?
In fact, as far as I’m aware, parents are even legally responsible for civil damages their children cause, aren’t they? I’m pretty sure if my kid breaks or ruins something I’m obliged to pay for it. I know I certainly would be full of apologies (being apologetic, at least in person, is my nature, anyway) and would happily pay to clean someone’s suit if my kid spilled something on it. But would you still think I was a total jerk because the incident happened, even if I apologize and pay for the damages?
catsix and everyone else: I, at least, think parents who don’t make an honest effort to control the noise an disruption created by their children are crappy parents and inconsiderate people. If my child damages something of value, accidentally or on purpose, I’d pay for it in a heartbeat (just as I’d pay for something I damaged, accidentally or on purpose).
That’s not the point of this thread. This thread started because someone implied that a parent who allows their child to cry for two minutes in a crowded bookstore without immediately fleeing the premises is a horrible person, and then proceeded to catsix stating flatly that children shouldn’t be allowed to go on planes at all just on the off chance they disturb her perfect flight.
That is the idea with which I take issue. That we ought to be completely intolerant of anything that bothers us even a little bit, because our comfort and happiness is all that matters. I’m going to give people a break once in a while, because sooner or later, I’m going to fuck up, and I’d like them to give me a break in return.
I was attempting to point out that we accomodate others every day in life - it is part of being decent members of society. However, since there are posters here who do not seem to want to give one inch to people with kids - I thought I would start drawing my personal lines in the sand as well.
Back in the '60s and '70s, my dad was a graduate student and then a professor. As a result, he went to various universities in Canada, the US and England.
As a result of that, my family did a lot of flying. My parents had three young children, myself included, and I must have flown dozens of times as a baby and child.
While I suppose they did not need to fly, it would certainly be a hardship to instead travel with three young children for days by boat and car. The thought that they should not be allowed to fly just so that others would not risk relatively minor inconvenience is just bizzare to me.
Personally, I think that those who are so sensitive to potential inconvenience should just stay indoors at home where they are safe.
:eek: “No one ‘needs’ to visit Grandma”…? Not a child nor an adult??? Are you fucking kidding me?
That’s right folks. We don’t want annoying people on airplanes, especially children, so we’re going to keep families apart. Gran has a health issue and can’t fly without dying? Well, tough shit, I guess she’ll never meet her grandchild face to face then because the child might annoy or incovenience a total stranger for a few hours.
And hell, since no adult “needs” to fly either: Sorry, Mom. You live in England and I can’t take a month off work to paddle across the sea to visit you. Looks like you’ll die without ever seeing your only son again.
Divorced parents splitting visitation rights? Forgetaboutit! Unless you can drive across the country.
No, you didn’t…I thought your post was great, and expressed this idea perfectly. I’m sure if you kept going, you could find a behavior or quality that applied to Heffalump and Roo, or any of us. Because none of us is perfect, and all of us do things that are irritating to others or inconvenience them some of the time…it’s just a fact of life.
Actually, I think Carol is right. No one NEEDS to fly. Maybe there is the occational “need to be airlifted out for a medical emergency” but the human race survived and prospered long before air travel.
However NO ONE needs to fly. Families don’t need to visit Grandma (my great grandfather left his mother back in Germany and never saw her again - and it took months to get letters across). Families don’t need to vacation. But - CEOs don’t need to fly to business meetings - they can video conference or drive. People don’t need to travel for conferences. I need to take a business trip to install some software - technically I could hire someone local to do it, no reason for me to get on a plane. We have remote software, video conferences, phones, agents working for us in foreign countries - air travel would be less of a loss now than any time previously. And when we do NEED to get somewhere, we can drive.
Yet, even with our ability to attend a conference through our computer, have a meeting over the phone, or hire someone halfway across the world to represent us - we still get on planes because being there in person is often better - and we get on planes more often than we used to - and we all do. Kids do. Business people do. When I started working, we didn’t send nearly everyone in the company to one “travel” conference - now we do, cheap airfare has made it affordable, and there are fewer local training/education opportunities as a result. So is visiting Grandma. So is taking a vacation where you don’t spend half of it in the car.
Since you’re so smart, please explain the differences. I’m not saying the two attitudes are exactly the same in every way, but that they are similar in type, if not degree. So, how am I wrong?
See here. You’re right, the similarity in degree does exist. It’s just that it’s so remarkable and profound, it’s worth keeping in mind when trying to make such a comparison.
People on this thread are saying that babies and kids shouldn’t have the right to fly on planes, among other things. Is that not oppression and subjugation?
But Captain_C did not say that and no one else had said it when you made the comment that his post was the same as someone saying they didn’t like black people. That’s all I’m saying.
And as for the stated position(s) you mention, you would be correct in that characterization.