Does that pov also hold true for the local highways and byways?
http://www.nj.gov/lps/hts/childseats/childseats_newlaw.html
btw: United AL shows nonstops from DR to EWR with 24 seats in First.
They were purchasing with miles. Not $.
No airline is going to allow all of its first class to be award travel. It doesn’t surprise me they didn’t get all 16 in premium.
If the flight attendant actually told the mother to make the child sit, that would be rude and offensive. However, this is the mother’s version, correct?
This sounds like it could have been handled much better, on so many levels. When people treat each other with respect, most all ugliness can be avoided.
Is that the first thing that the FA said to the mother? Or, is it what she said after the situation escalated? These people have traveled with their special needs child; they should have been prepared to deal with the possibility that at some point a FA would not bend the rules for them.
The pilot came up with a workable solution
I try to put myself in the parents’ shoes."
He came up with a workable solution AFTER he was put in a predicament by a family who KNEW that their kid needed a seat (hence 16 tix for 16 pax) and yet decided to wait until they were at the gate (per the mother) “oh, she can’t sit, we will have to hold her.”
Really, dstark? You really think it’s appropriate to spring special needs and a disregard of the rules at the gate versus calling ahead and making whatever arrangements/exceptions?
Can I show up and demand a wheelchair at the back end, or do I need to call ahead and make appropriate arrangements first so that one will be ready for me?
The parents dropped the ball.
I think “has to be in a seat” is being translated into “make her sit”. Also, the child was 3 so it’s entirely possible that the last time she flew she was a two year old so what happened then is not really relevant. The mom could have and should have moved and making an hour long fuss followed by going on talk shows because you were offended is not admirable, either.
Dstark, let’s say it had been a “normal” 3 yo. And the parents wanted to hold her. She’ll cry if we don’t. She gets scared. Maybe she has a mental disability (but not a physical one). Would you have said “aw, let her sit on mom’s lap anyway, let it go”? Why or why not? What about an 8 yo with a mental disability who would prefer to be in mom’s arms?
The “last time she flew” was likely on their way TO the Dominican Republic for the vacation. This was their return flight from the trip.
^^The mother went on talk shows???
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We are cheap, and never, ever pay for first class.
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We never pay either…first class either thru upgrades or when H’s company would fly us somewhere.
The prices are crazy…only the rich can do that…lol.
I get what you are saying Dstark - things could have been handled a lot better by the flight attendant in view of the circumstances. I am sure this is a difficult thread for you.
There is nothing to suggest the FA wasn’t professional. But she had a rule to enforce. She wasn’t doing it to be mean.
Has there been anyone else on the plane who witnessed the interaction?
I really wish I would have been on that flight, in order to report the exact details back to you all!
However, if I had been, I’m sure I would have volunteered my first class seat for takeoff and landing and if that wasn’t adequate, suggested something else and this would not be a talk show issue. Talk shows, seriously? No doubt most of the frequent fliers on here would have helped resolve this quickly.
I’ve switched seats to accommodate families who needed to fly together. I once sat in the middle seat in the last row of a plane so a family could be seated together. Honestly, it would have been nice to be moved to first class…but SW doesn’t HAVE first class!
It was certainly not my first choice seat, but I was traveling alone, and my seat was adjacent to the rest of the group. This was a situation where they should gotten to the airport in time to board after the A group…which is when families are boarded…but no…they arrived dead last to board. And no, they were not connecting from elsewhere. They were just “running late”.
But really…the plane wasn’t going to budge until someone moved…
Thinking about it, when the family was flying, because it was international, they had to provide a passport for everyone. In looking at the family picture, the child could have passed for a two-year old (as opposed to the three-year old she was) in size, also according to what someone said how much she weighed. However, since this was an international flight, they also had to produce a passport at check-in, and at that point, someone, who might have questioned her age otherwise because no ID was required for the child (if it were just a domestic flight), obviously would have seen her passport, noted she was over two, and demanded she have her own ticket. So that’s probably why the parents got a ticket for her - they knew a ticketing agent would note that she is over two on the passport and they couldn’t get away with not buying her a ticket and claiming at the gate that she was two and getting away with her sitting on their lap as she had done on previous flights.
Makes me wonder if these parents had flown domestically recently, and not been held accountable for purchasing a seat for her, because they told flight crews that the D was under two.
I wonder how they flew on their trip TO the Dominican Republic?
Can people provide links to their comments?
The plane did budge.
DStark…if you are referring to my post 193…I was talking about MY story. MY plane wasn’t going to budge until someone moved to accommodate the late arriving family with young children. So I moved so the plane could budge.
I know it’s difficult to travel with a physically disabled youngster. But really, the airlines are most accommodating if they are asked. During peak travel times like holidays,when planes are most full. It is even more imperative to plan ahead. That planning ahead would have prevented the issues in the article in post one.
All the parents had to do was bring a car seat. The child travels in a car seat on land. Problem solved. Dstark. I appreciate this is difficult for you but the family didn’t make the arrangements they should have ahead of time. And this is not a poorly resourced, naive, first time on a flight family. You are letting your sympathies for the toll of raising a disabled child blind you to their mistake.
A family member of mine was thrown off a United plane in Chicago for asking the FA to do something about a broken overhead speaker that was causing those around them to actually have to cover their ears during pre-flight announcements because it was loud enough to cause physical pain. (Like get it turned off, maybe?) I don’t remember all of the details of the story, but the FA was behaving in an extremely stressed manner before he had the temerity to make the request. I think that others had already complained about it. Anyway, the other passengers were sufficiently convinced that he had done nothing wrong that they not only exclaimed “No, no!” when she had him removed, but pressed their business cards–unsolicited–on his spouse to support any complaint they wished to make.
BUT…these parents, or at least the mother, were obviously out of line. It is difficult to believe that they could not simply have seated her in between them with a belt around her, and supported her with their arms for takeoff and landing. It just occurred to me that they might not have a car seat with them, because they might have rented a car with one in the DR and left their own in their own car.
One does wonder how they got away with it on the flight down: most likely the FAs chose to ignore the situation and pretend they thought she was under 2 because they didn’t want to endure the complaining and charges of hard-heartedness that would ensue. Lucky for them that the flight didn’t encounter severe turbulence and the child wasn’t injured. You KNOW this woman would have been on the talk shows screaming about how the airlines didn’t care about her disabled child and failed to inform them of the safety regs which OF COURSE they would have obeyed, had they only known! Big $$ suit to follow.