Toddler's tantrum gets family thrown off plane

[Count_Blucher]

@C3

Tell me about it! On our flight that I mentioned earlier in the thread, the leg from Australia to LA was hellish. When we got on the plane, they had all three of our seats split up in totally different sections of the plane. They thought it was perfectly reasonable to have a three year old totally separated from his parents, who would also be separated. Plus, one of us would have had the baby on our lap. For FOURTEEN HOURS! Then, when we indicated that this really wasn’t the best plan, the stewardess acted like we were being extremely unreasonable. Thankfully, as my voice started getting a little louder, people around us started to pick up on the situation and the passengers fixed everything up for us. We ended up having a bulkhead row all to ourselves. That was only the first of a list of stupid things that happened on that flight.

You’re lucky. If our voices stray one octave above begging, the flight crews here brand us ‘Osama Bin Grounded’ and get all National Security on us.

in 2007, flight crews are The Most Entitled positions of unchecked, unbridled dictatorial power this side of the Jack Bauer. We better realize that we are just the Peons who they allow, by divine right of flight school and by their whims, to ride on a plane. Cargo doesn’t get a voice, why should we? We better just take our beatings & step to the left in an orderly fashion…

[brownie55]

@RickJay

But according to the parents, that’s all it was.

If the parents legitimately refused to buckle the child into her seat, of course they had to be removed. They claim that is now what happened, however, and this claim of a “fifteen minute delay” sounds fishy - Christ, every plane I’m on is held up by a dozen or more idiots who can’t ifnd their seats, want to change seats, bring carryon the size of steamer trunks, etc. etc.

There’s two sides to every story.

Well, I have been on about a zillion flight with screaming children, and I have never seen one thrown off. I am guessing the airline’s story is closer to the truth on this one.

[Batsinma_Belfry]

My husband was forced to ride a rollercoaster, seperated from his older brother when he was 6. Almost 40 years later, he can’t go near a rollercoaster.

@Corner Case

Gotta hijack a tad and answer.

1. My wife has the kids and meets her friend and her friend’s kids at a mall. They go to the food court and get food to the table. Our son throws a tantrum and she straps him into the stroller. He still screams. They are trying to hurry through lunch. A woman comes over and says her mother is trying to shop for a card for a death in the family and could she keep the child quiet. My wife is apologetic and explains briefly about our son’s autism and problems. A short time later the woman has called Mall Security and the guard comes saying that my wife must come with our son and talk. She is forced to leave our other children with our friend and her children. He escorts them to one of those corridors between stores that leads back into the bowels of the mall. He says he has to ask her to leave the mall because of the complaint about the noise. At first he wasn’t going to let her return because there might be more noise. Nevermind that she’s had to abandon the other kids, oh no. Fortunately her friend is a good friend and fortunately the Mall Cop relents. They reunite, gather up, and leave.

I would not have the same reaction as your wife. The woman who thought your family should leave because of a little noise, in a FOOD COURT, was being a meddling bitch. I’m sure that wasn’t the only card store in the area. And if you’re looking for a quiet place to shop, you don’t go to a store next to a food court, or even in a mall.

My son is also autistic. But, instead of tantrums, he would get really happy and excited when we would go places. He would laugh (loudly), and ask a million questions about everything. The only time we chastised him for it was if his excitement triggered his asthma or if the situation called for quiet, such as a movie, or a funeral or something. Most people would get a kick out of his joy, although there were a few exceptions. Once, when we were having dinner out with friends at a FAMILY restaurant, my son was chattering away. He wasn’t even being loud, but apparantly it was too much for the man at the next table. He asked the server, very loudly, if she could bring him a needle and thread, then motioned toward my son, and mimmicked sewing his mouth. Then he let loose an incredibly loud laugh like it was the funniest joke ever. The server just smiled and turned red. The guy’s companions turned red but kind of laughed. Our friends suggested we all go someplace else. My husband got embarrassed and told my son not to talk anymore. I agreed to leave because my friends were uncomfortable. But I told the man that he was an absolute ass for ruining our night out, and that my son was autistic, and asked him what his exscuse was for the way he was behaving.

[Rick]

@Count Blucher

Mini-hijack: why is it that no matter how hard you try, no matter how far in advance you book it, no matter how much Cust. Service assures you it won’t happen, even if you pre-print your fucking boarding passes, when you book 4 seats on a plane some airline fuck-tard ALWAYS splits you up 3 & 1???

Well one reason might be is that on a narrow bodied passenger jet there are 3 seats on each side of the asile. Little tough to put 4 passengers in three seats.

[OpalCat]

Right, but if you look at it a certain way, splitting it 2/2 makes more sense, as then nobody from the party sits alone.

[OpalCat]

@Batsinma Belfry

But I told the man that he was an absolute ass for ruining our night out, and that my son was autistic, and asked him what his exscuse was for the way he was behaving.

So… how did he react? Must hear the rest of the story!!

[Full_Metal_Lotus]

Its only 15 minutes that the kid wasted/

No… its NOT!

Do the math. Be conservative, say there was/were only 200 people on the flight. 200 times 15 minutes = 6000 minutes or 10 hrs.

That kid (and the parents wasted 10 hrs of other peoples’ collective time. The interval was only 15 minutes, but, to make the case, if you were paying all those people $8/hr for their time wasted, would you say “its only 15 minutes”?.

Same thing goes for people who “will only take a second” to do something when their pause costs a group waiting time. Traffic situations, late for meetings and many other analogies abound.

It is thoughtless, selfish and inconsiderate to say the least.

What if the plane is carrying time sensitive materials? 15 minutes can mean a great deal to transplant organ items. Would you like to let your potential kidney wait /deteriorate an extra 15 minutes?

The parents were rudeand inconsiderate, and the airline was incredibly accomodating in their recompensation offer…

I would have refunded them their ticket cost, and then billed them for the value (collectively) of the wasted time of all the other travellers, plus the penalties for late delivery on any time sensitive materials the plane was carrying.

but I am just a meanie that way…

Regards
FML

[OpalCat]

…not to mention people with tight connections to other flights.

[susan]

Are we assuming that the parents are ruled by the child? Might an out-of-control kid and a passive parent at least suggest that mom was drunk/stoned? Heroin makes people very calm. I haven’t seen video; just speculating.

[flodnak]

@OpalCat

Right, but if you look at it a certain way, splitting it 2/2 makes more sense, as then nobody from the party sits alone.

But looked at another way, splitting it 3/1 makes sense, because then one member of the party does sit alone. For our family of four, I’d rather be split that way. Our kids are older now, and even when totnak was a baby, the big age difference between the kids meant that flodjunior was already school-aged. One of us sits with the kids, the other gets time to relax, read an actual book, take a nap, whatever. On short flights we’ll just try to make sure one parent is On Duty on the way out, the other on the way home; on long flights we can tag-team so we both can get some rest. So some of us do like the way it’s typically done, although I sympathize with those parents of two younger kids who prefer a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Most likely, of course, it’s the way the software is set up, rather than the whim of the agent printing out the boarding passes, that makes a 3/1 split the default.

As for the family that got kicked off the plane - I took a transatlantic flight alone with flodjunior when he was 3. I actually thought that was the perfect age: small enough to be enthralled by all the new sights and sounds, but old enough to be past the Uncontrollable Outburst stage for the most part. Verbal enough to understand what he was being asked to do, and little enough to want to please adults. Maybe these things only apply to children who haven’t been taught that they are the center of the universe, but we had a great flight.

[The_Scrivener]

Nitpick: wasting 15 minutes’ time for 200 people = 3000 minutes, or 50 hours. @ $8.00/hr. [a lowballing calculation, to be sure] = $400.00

But the real damage is in the multiplier effect re. screwing up airport schedules, possibly leading to a cascading effect of delays, missed connections, etc. And unexpectedly long delays in winter weather can be very dangerous, if it leads to a hazardous ice build-up on a plane that had already been de-iced and taxied off, but then had to wait… and wait…

[Muffin]

Simple solution: rendition.

[StuffLikeThatThere]

@Jess

The thing about the split seats reminds me of a very sad story my mother tells. In 1963, my mother had to take me and my 2 siblings on a plane to Hawaii to meet my father, who was stationed there with the Navy. I was 3 years old, my brother was 2, and my sister was 1. The seats on the plane were in banks of three, and each of us had to have a seat to ourselves, even the baby. My mother (only 23 herself, rather shy and flying for the first time), wasn’t allowed to hold the baby on her lap – one of us had to sit in one of the seats behind. I was the natural choice – my brother was hyper as hell, and my sister was a very clingy baby. I was the oldest, reasonably well-behaved, and the chatty kind of kid who never met a stranger. Behind us were two soldiers, both in their dress uniforms, on the way to meet their unit in Hawaii and then on to Vietnam. One of the soldiers reassured my mom, saying that he had a daughter my age and that I’d be fine with him.

What none of us knew was that, in childhood, I was rather violently prone to motion sickness. Sudden, projectile motion sickness. All over their dress uniforms.

Mom was absolutely mortified, as you can imagine. But the soldier was as sweet to me as could be, cleaning me up, and comforting me and assuring Mom that a little kid-puke wouldn’t kill him. His first name was Sandy and Mom always ends the story by saying that she has no way of knowing whether or not he made it home from Vietnam, but that she sure hopes that he did. He was a standup guy.

Jess, that’s really sweet. I like hearing the occasional true story about basic decency. I hope Sandy made it home and is living a happy, full life.
Like brownie55, I’m having a hard time imagining that a little screaming prevented a flight from taking off. I’ve been on a flight where it was a middle aged woman with a terror of flying doing the screaming, and it was worse than any 3 year old screaming I’ve ever heard. After all, she’d had more practice.

I’m solidly with the airline on this one. I’m assuming it’s the parents who sought out the press coverage on this one – does the press really go around finding people who have problems with a service industry? Entitled much, folks? If I ever have the urge to contact the press about poor treatment, it’ll be about something a lot more serious than being bumped off a flight which may be a large inconvenience, but is still an inconvenience, and not a tragedy.

[Shodan]

@Weirddave

Heh. This is funny. I have a 2 year old who is very well behaved, but the lessons Ginger and I have taught him have sunk in deeply. When he gets upset and doesn’t want to do anything, he’ll be just like any other 2 year old, squirming and wiggling, fighting hard to not do what he doesn’t want to do. But the whole time he’ll be saying, in an insistent tone of voice; “No thank you daddy, no thank you daddy, NO thank you daddy, no THANK YOU daddy, NO THANK YOU DADDY!!!” It’s kind of amusing.
Afterwards.

Gad, that’s funny - Emily Post pitches a fit.

Shodan Jr. used to do something like that when he was a wee one - yelling “NO SANK YOU DADDY! I BUSY!!!” at bed time.

And we got kicked out of a barber shop because he was terrified of getting his hair cut, and the plastic rat they gave him did not calm him down. Not a cute cuddly Mickey Mouse thing - a hard plastic, life-size, realistic replica. The thing gave me a shudder, and I was a grown up (pretty much).

I didn’t think he was that bad - he was crying, but not kicking or resisting, and for some reason they refused to let me hold him on my lap during the haircut. So I apologized, left, and took him down the road to Cost Cutters. There Beverly, a grandmotherly type took him under her wing, and told me to go somewhere else for about twenty minutes.

I returned twenty minutes later, to find little Shodan Jr. clutching a fistful of combs in one hand, and a spritz bottle of water in the other. Everything in about a five foot radius was soaking wet, but he was giggling and his hair was neatly cut.

Ten bucks for the haircut, and a twenty dollar tip.

He turned eighteen about a week and a half ago. And he shaves his head.

Sigh.

Regards,
Shodan

[Ruby]

@OpalCat

Reminds me of a story, though: I remember once we were flying with Dominic, who was about four at the time. We all had assigned seats but they weren’t together (any of them). Naturally we first asked the person in the seat next to Dominic’s assigned seat if they’d be willing to trade seats. The guy was kind of a dick and said no. So I started to seat Dominic next to him and made sure to over-play* the whole “ok now make sure you don’t bother this gentleman, ok?” etc etc etc. Once the guy realized that he was going to be sitting next to an unsupervised 4 year old, he suddenly changed his mind about trading seats. (He ended up with a better seat, I don’t see what the problem was. He did seem like kind of a dick though)

I’ve heard that the best way to get Mr. Dickhead to move is to sit your unattended child in his seat and then make a Big Deal about how to use the air sickness bag when he needs to throw up, explaining to Mr. Dickhead that should he need to help the little tyke…!
:eek:

[lezlers]

I just watched the video and could not believe how biased ABC was. Geez, did that family pay them off or something? And the nerve of those parents to accept the refund then go and publicly badmouth the airline like that. Talk about having no shame.

I’ve also been on dozens of flights with screeching, screaming children. A child is going to have to do a lot more than cry to get his family booted off an airplane. I hope the people watching that report had enough common sense to realize a family is not going to get kicked off an airplane just because their child is crying.

Nice “journalism” there, ABC. :rolleyes:

[Dangerosa]

@Ruby

I’ve heard that the best way to get Mr. Dickhead to move is to sit your unattended child in his seat and then make a Big Deal about how to use the air sickness bag when he needs to throw up, explaining to Mr. Dickhead that should he need to help the little tyke…!
:eek:

As well as handing him the sippy cup with juice and reminding him not to untwist the cap and dump it all over the nice gentleman seated next to him like he did yesterday to Mommy. Give him his bag of Goldfish crackers and say “Mommy is in the back of the plane. If you run out, I won’t know, so you’ll just have to sit still - please do not have a tantrum.” Then mention that the potties are at the back of the plane and he’ll have to go himself (you might want to mention to the guy sitting next to them that he potty trained late, but hadn’t had an accident in weeks unless he is really exicited or ill, did you mention the whole family was going to DisneyWorld! And he did have a little diaherrea yesterday - you have him in a pull up just in case.)

With any luck, Mr. Dickhead will turn white before he volunteers to let you have his seat.

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

Now, I’m not up to snuff on aeronautics, but could they just exile the kid to a trailer?

Hear me out…what if we attached a sort of trailer to the back of a plane that had its own wings and everything?

No, wait…turbulence would be a motherfucker…

…don’t mind me. I’m special.

[CairoCarol]

My son was born in South Africa, spent his first year in Mozambique, moved to Indonesia for three years, then moved to Egypt. Along the way we’ve visited grandparents in Mexico and the US annually, as well as taking international vacations nearly every Christmas. So you can just imagine how many times he has flown (we stopped counting at 100 flights, which was when he was 3 or so).

Incredibly, I do not even have ONE story of him creating a problem on an airplane (well, he did once at 3 mos., but it involved an explosive bowel movement; nothing that caused annoyance for anyone but his parents. In fact the older couple in the seat behind us got a huge kick out of it; probably thinking back nostalgically to their own time as new parents).

Partly this is luck, partly good planning (I always bring lots of distractions, psych him up for the trip, etc.), and partly because he knows there would indeed be unpleasant consequences for misbehavior (no spanking though – I know it works for some but it’s not for me, thanks).

So I’m with the airline on this one.

Yet, I can’t help feeling a bit of sympathy for parents whose kids are autistic, hyperactive, etc. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the situation under discussion, and anyway, if you have to strap the kid into the carseat, you just do it, no matter what. But some kids still might throw tantrums or act out during the flight, and being the best-prepared, most fantastic parent in the world won’t necessarily change that.

So passengers need to cut parents a break, too. If you hear a screaming kid, and the parents seems to be attentively trying to deal with the situation and it isn’t working, a little sympathy is in order.

Virtually all of my fellow passengers have been absolutely magnificent during travel with our son (offering to hold him, offering to get me something from the galley, summoning flight attendants for me, etc.) but friends have told me that they’ve had fellow travelers take one look at their (quiet, stationary) small children and announce loudly to the world “little kids should be barred from taking airplanes, it isn’t fair to the adults on the plane.”

My son is older now, but I was just spoiling for somebody to say that to me when he was an infant. I had a response all prepared – I was going to gulp like I was about to cry, and start shaking and apologizing, saying “(sniif) I know it’s wrong of me, but m-m-my mother is d-dying of cancer, and she just wants to see her grandbaby one last time, boo hoo…I’m so sorry I’m ruining your flight.”

It woulda been a crock, of course, and I don’t usually support bald-faced lying, but it would have served this hypothetical jerk right.

[rackensack]

@CairoCarol

Virtually all of my fellow passengers have been absolutely magnificent during travel with our son (offering to hold him, offering to get me something from the galley, summoning flight attendants for me, etc.) but friends have told me that they’ve had fellow travelers take one look at their (quiet, stationary) small children and announce loudly to the world “little kids should be barred from taking airplanes, it isn’t fair to the adults on the plane.”

I really wish I could find the old thread from way back when that turned into quite a little donnybrook on this subject. Started by comments to that effect, basically: “why are you polluting my world with your brats?”. And I have had that experience myself when traveling with my kids (though the helpful reactions still outnumber the snippy ones, and my kids generally get complimented by neighboring passengers on being well behaved, even when – in my opinion – they haven’t been).