Posted on 02/26/2020 6:28:59 AM PST by Freeport
American, Delta and United all charge big fees for families to sit together. And in some cases, they knowingly separate kids from their parents on board – even 2-year-olds!
Airlines can easily fix this, but they haven’t. Doing so would mean giving up millions of dollars in fees from parents who simply want to keep their kids safe.
Sign our petition demanding airlines put safety over profits! Children should sit with their parents on a plane.
(Excerpt) Read more at action.consumerreports.org ...
I was on a Southwest flight from Florida to Texas and we were all signed seated and ready to go despite a large load. About 5 minutes after sitting at the gate, a shapely blonde came wandering down the aisle and I soon realized she had two young children with her.
Knowing she had no chance to find three connected seats available, I got up and told the flight attendant I will volunteer to be moved if it can provide three connected seats. I was moved and the blonde thanked me for my consideration which was reward enough for me.
As soon as this concluded, her husband comes down the aisle with two more kids! Well, this was out of my control and he wound up seated next to one child and near the other about 10 rows further up than the wife with her two kids.
I know it is difficult with children but, parents, please please please get everyone and their luggage and their binkies and their dollies there AHEAD of schedule so you don’t cause the wait and disruption this family did. Show some consideration for everyone else that wants to leave the gate on time and get where they are going so you don’t make everyone else impatient with you. That’s all I ask.
Same thing happened to me between Chicago and Anchorage in the ‘80s. I was going to my aisle seat that I’d reserved/paid for months earlier. I noticed a big man was sitting there, so I didn’t say a word and turned around and spoke to the attendant. She went to him and asked to see his boarding pass. (He was angry. He told her, “She looked at me with THOSE EYES!” LOL!)
His seat was next to me in the middle, but he wanted to sit on the aisle. She told him to move in and he sassed her back with a borderline threat (illegal). She went to the cockpit and the pilot or co-pilot came back and told him he had choices: He could get off the plane now, move to his seat and behave, or be handcuffed until Chicago and be removed then. (I don’t know if that’s even possible, but that’s what was said.)
The guy moved in, I sat down, and then he went into maximum “man spreading” mode, putting his leg past the middle of my leg space. The person across the aisle from me noticed and called the attendant. She moved me up to first class, and I don’t know what all went on with the guy after that.
Like you said, “Don’t book late and expect to bump the people who booked in advance from their selected seats to accommodate your lack of planning.”
This sounds like complete BS to me
it never has ever happened to me on any of my flights with any of my children
Have you ever considered planning ahead and getting seats together in the first place?
You wouldn’t find me very accommodating as you’ve presented it here.
I would probably go to the stewardess and complain about being threatened
LOL!!!!
Which they can do, if they get their tickets and select their seats in time.
And until 21? Are you kidding me? They are adults responsible for their own behavior by age 18.
Whatever the age parents can send kids on their own should be the age that they can buy tickets for their kids that are not contiguous with their own seats.
At 8 years old, I flew alone from Hawaii to Boston. On my way to summer camp, nobody made a fuss—but it was 1956.
I miss the 50s...
MAGA!
“I had a family ask me to move from my preferred aisle to a middle seat on a flight from SFO-FRA recently so they could sit together - they actually tried to give me attitude when I declined”.
I was just reading that corona-viruses are more readily spread to those in aisle seats.
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