Honestly, I will never wrap my head around how people can happily bring infants on any flight where you can expect people to try and sleep, it’s incredibly lucky if they don’t spend some of it screaming their heads off—I would be mortified if my choices were preventing hundreds of people from sleeping. But I’m not going to rant too hard about that.
Why on earth hasn’t any airline started marketing adult-only flights?
It seems like a complete no brainer to me, I would choose it every time and pay extra for it.
Disclaimer: I may or may not be on a 36h day with only an hour of sleep right now
If you’re an adult who doesn’t have or don’t work around children it’s hard to overstate how irritating they are. The noise, lack of self-awareness, the energy, the stickiness, and you have to censor yourself around them. Additionally, they’re way harder to reason with (if they even can communicate) and parents are notoriously shitty and self-righteous. Finally adults have consequences. If an adult screams their head off, runs up and down the aisles, or hit people around them then flight attendants can do something
You also act like that child HAS to be on that plane. You can drive, you could leave the kid with someone else, you could take a train, a bus, or you could just not go. We know planes specifically are really uncomfortable for babies because of the pressure. You chose to have a kid presumably knowing that you’d be making sacrifices for them. Maybe one of those sacrifices should be flying until they’re old enough to behave
I don’t mind kids on planes. They can be loud or obnoxious but adults can be worse, so whatever. If you have such a problem, you can drive, take a train or just not go, you know?
Same. I’ve flown more than most, sometimes with screaming kids nearby. Normally I don’t mind beyond the extra noise, provided that I’m well rested. The times when getting proper rest onboard is important, I book business class, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen kids in there.
I’ve had one instance of a baby in business class. Was flying from Johannesburg to London for work, so was lucky enough that work policy allowed business class for a flight of that length. Someone had a baby with them also in business and that kid screamed non stop virtually the entire flight. Was a lot of unhappy people when we landed.
Was an overnight flight too so the expectation was that everyone would sleep the majority of the trip. Nope.
I’m an adult with adult responsibilities and obligations. Occasionally I do have to be on a plane. That child’s presence is almost certainly not required somewhere with such urgency that they simply must be on a plane. Also I can and do behave myself so I don’t need to be justified. Babies usually can’t and don’t, which is why we’re having this conversation in the first place
We need a travel justification board so only truly necessary air travel is authorized and approved. Nein. No babiez on ze plane
Consider it the price you pay for travel freedom.
Maybe let’s chill on comparing people who don’t want to be annoyed by babies on airplanes to nazis?
Yeah, fair. German speaking people however do seem to love processes and rules. I wasn’t actually thinking of Nazis, just the German stereotypes.
“Oi, you got a licence for that baby?”
We can leave the child’s travel urgency and behaviour out of this, I think. Kids don’t decide to travel on a plane, and they behave how they do. This is really about the parents. They are the ones taking their children on planes. So, they are adults with responsibilities and obligations which includes caring for their children and usually that means bringing them with them on planes.