<p>ORLANDO, Fla. - AirTran Airways on Tuesday defended its decision to remove a Massachusetts couple from a flight after their crying 3-year-old daughter refused to take her seat before takeoff.</p>
<p>AirTran officials said they followed Federal Aviation Administration rules that children age 2 and above must have their own seat and be wearing a seat belt upon takeoff.</p>
<p>“The flight was already delayed 15 minutes and in fairness to the other 112 passengers on the plane, the crew made an operational decision to remove the family,” AirTran spokeswoman Judy Graham-Weaver said.</p>
<p>Julie and Gerry Kulesza, who were headed home to Boston on Jan. 14 from Fort Myers, said they just needed a little more time to calm their daughter, Elly.</p>
<p>“We weren’t given an opportunity to hold her, console her or anything,” Julie Kulesza said in a telephone interview Tuesday.</p>
<p>Can I get reimbursed plus get 3 round-trip seats if my kid had a fit? I am willing to train my youngest (it’s not too late!!!she’s only 12!) to do this. I would love to get free tickets with this trick!! I raised 3 imperfect kids, but I removed them from public areas when necessary, so others could eat/sleep/whatever. </p>
<p>What a nerve!! And to top it off, after receiving 3 + 3 tickets, the father says he would never fly Airtran again. Well, Amen to that.</p>
<p>k…a 3 year old has a temper tantrum and the parents are mad at the airline…jeesh</p>
<p>good for airtran, i probably would have applauded the crew</p>
<p>the parents were not in control…</p>
<p>who wants to bet that kid did that all the time </p>
<p>once my D had a temper tantrum in a grocery store, body flailing on the ground, little did I know she had take her underpants off in the car…I apologized, picked her up and left…her tantrum lasted about 2 minutes by the time I got her to the car…you can generally read your child and see when they are going to lose it</p>
<p>flying with kids takes planning, preparation, etc…strap the kid in the seat, give the “look” and be a parent</p>
<p>“refused” to take her seat…excuse me, but WHAT?</p>
<p>Actually, I feel for this family. You can’t remove a crying child to from a public area on a plane. </p>
<p>I very recently flew on a very long trip, seated a couple of rows behind a family with a small baby who cried a lot, especially during take-off and landing, owing, I’m sure, to disturbed sleep patterns and pressure in her ears. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was not the end of the world.</p>
<p>I can sympathize with parents of crying babies, but this is a 3-year old, who crawled under the seat, “refused” to come out or be buckled in her seat. The parents have probably made her who she is. Should be adorable in her teens :eek:</p>
<p>I read this story several days ago with great interest. On a recent flight I witnessed a very similar situation. A young girl (3 or 4 yrs old) sitting between her mother and her grandmother refused to buckle her seatbelt. Rather than being assertive and in control her mother placed the girl on her lap. I was incensed and didn’t speak up although I kept looking up and down the aisle waiting for the stewardess (or steward) to check seatbelts for landing, which they did not do. The little girl remained on her mother’s lap during the landing. I wondered if the mother buckles her daughter’s seatbelt while driving in a car. I really wish the employes on my flight had been as diligent as the Air Trans employees and insisted that this little girl be buckled in. She wasn’t even that horrible of a kid. I just couldn’t believe how her mother gave in to her.</p>
<p>Babies get a pass. But not bratty 3 year olds who are climbing under seats and holding up the flight. </p>
<p>
LOL!!!</p>
<p>I don’t know why this story reminds me of this incident, but here goes. My neighbor has 5 kids & she inadvertantly put her oldest daughter’s “skorts” in her 5 year old son’s drawer. He cluelessly put them on one morning & went to kindergarten. (She walked him, but with a big brood, including twins in a stroller, the skorts went unnoticed.) Imagine her horror when he came bounding down the stairs at pick-up time.</p>
<p>Well, families are allowed to board first for good reason; they have time to get their kids settle in, bring out the entertainment (workbooks, in our case!!), and issue dire warnings or bribes. </p>
<p>This flight was already 15 minutes late thanks to the kid who “refused”; what about other passengers’ connections and schedules. Besides, if the kid was injured during takeoff, these lovelies would be first in line with a lawsuit.</p>
<p>Yeah, it wasn’t that the kid was crying. She “refused” to take her seat. Parents have to be able to control that. I’m sure they weren’t ready to be financially responsible to all the people who would have missed connecting flights if the plane had been delayed any longer.</p>
<p>I’m with the cc crowd on this one. I always feel great sympathy for parents of infants/small toddlers on planes when a child is crying/inconsolable. Usually, I suspect, for the reason’s marite mentioned - ear problems, general tenseness.</p>
<p>But a 3-year old who <em>refuses</em> to take her seat? Excuse me?</p>
<p>She’s the child of the parents, for sure, imho. What kind of chutzpah seeks a passel of freebies when a child in a power struggle causes this kind of havoc? Note that the child wins the power struggle. I’ll bet the other airlines can’t wait to “win” this family’s business.</p>
<p>Just let me add my general agreement with the crowd here–and especially jmmom’s observation that the manipulative behavior seems to be inherited.</p>
<p>To be fair, the article doesn’t say the family asked for the freebies - I can imagine the airline might very well have offered these up on their own after asking the Kuleskas to disembark. </p>
<p>Also, I can understand the tantrum part, but not the out of the seat part - either belt the child in, still crying at that point or if it is really to the extreme and there’s no way to make the flight, don’t criticize the airline!</p>
<p>I agree with the crowd on this one. I flew to Europe several times as a toddler with my other siblings and parents, and we never had problems–maybe because sitting in the seat for takeoff wasn’t regarded as a choice!</p>
<p>If this had been my child,after putting the child in her seat with her seatbelt on, my husband and I would each have hold of the child’s hands (with a bit of pressure if necessary) to make sure she understood the importants fo being seated. This new wavy of parents that feel the need to negotiate everything with their children need to realize there are others involved here. My cousin spends so much time giving her daugher choices about everything that this child at 8 years old has the upper hand in the house. When she was 6 she told me her mother didn’t want a dog but she knew she would get one because she would just tell her mother she wanted one.</p>
<p>Refused to take her seat and she is three? Reminds me of when mine was in preschool, other parents would arrive late, saying the kid refused to get dressed. I was like, "hmm…refused to get dressed, I told mine it can be done the easy way or the hard way…the hard way involved physically changing him from pjs to clothes…
Good for the airline. A full plane sitting for 15 minutes, probably with no air conditioning while they “reason” with a three year old? Ridiculous.</p>
<p>The child could have been scared, or whatever, I mean I’m not going to jump to the conclusion that she’s a brat. Planes are scary for adults and for a toddler that is aware enough to know something is different but not fully grasping the situation, that could cause a meltdown, especially under the stress of traveling.</p>
<p>However what I don’t understand is how hard it is to put a three year old in a seat. I mean…it’s a three year old. How large can the child be? I guess she could have been completely resisting, but still seems like both parents could have put her in the seat in less than 15 minutes. After that amount of time I would expect they would be asked to make some change or leave…they simply can’t delay a flight that long. That doesn’t mean I think these are horrible people but realistically they need to come to terms with the fact that for whatever reason that situation wasn’t working out, and they couldn’t be given any more chances.</p>
<p>Whoa - do none of you remember what kids can be like in the “terrible twos” - which can hit anywhere from two to four years old? It can be a tough age to try to make do anything. A willful kid that age can be almost impossible to bring under control. Sure - you can physically overpower them, but they will become literally hysterical - and ain’t that fun on a plane? I don’t know about the rest of the story, but the idea that it “can’t be that hard” to make a three year old sit in a plane seat ignores the reality of some three year olds.</p>