Pizzagirl, you have no idea what it is like unless you have a kid who is disabled. You don’t know what happened. You are speculating. You are putting your thoughts into the parents’ brains. Their brains are different than yours. Their situation is different than yours. I don’t like telling people what to do when I am not in their situation.
I have had two very bad things happen to my family. I had no idea how I would react…until the bad things happened. I don’t know what I don’t know. Some posters seem to think they do know what they don’t know.
This family is in a really bad situation. I like to cut them some slack.
I wrote that the family should have made prior arrangements, but they didn’t. A situation has to be dealt with as it develops. There is no car seat so what do you do? You don’t tell a kid to sit in a chair if the kid can’t sit. The pilot came up with a good solution. That could have been the solution from the beginning.
Next time, the parents will have a seat for their child.
When I look at people my age, I see when they were little. Riding a tricycle. Unbridled joy. That unbridled joy is still somewhere in them. Now they are my age. They are going to die. Everybody is going to die. We are just humans. That’s it. We aren’t gods almighty. We don’t know everything. We can’t control that much. We do the best we can. We make mistakes. We are going to continue to make mistakes.
When I look at somebody, and they do something I might not like, I try to cut them some slack. They might be going through some serious stuff.
Though I generally side with the crew, there are some heavy handed, power hungry, inconsiderate flight attendants that are just awful. I’m sure we all have stories. Most are great, friendly, competent, and helpful, but an occasional few…whew! However, realize that in today’s environment, the flight attendants have power over the customers. That’s just the way it is. And no matter how obnoxious they might seem, you need to find a way to work with them or they might get you tossed off the flight. If you realize this, when ugly situations arise, you are better able to control your anger and deal with situation. Not everyone can control themselves, and the stress of all the things that happen while flying can make it so much worse.
That’s why it always helps to smile at flight attendants, be friendly, helpful, and non confrontational. You will have far greater success if you take the extra step of working with people, even if you are the one who has to back down.
dstark, why do you not consider the obvious solution of the parent moving to the back with the child, so they could belt her in and hold her up or hold her against them? Why is that not acceptable? No car seat required. No talk shows required. No delaying other passengers required.
I would point out also that the FA may well NOT have known that the family had 4 additional members in coach, and thus most likely access to a bloc of seats together where the parents could easily sit and cradle the child. The FA probably only knew that they had the one seat back there. The parents, of course, definitely DID know…but they weren’t volunteering that info, and neither, apparently, was the rest of the family.
I would have a lot more sympathy for the family if they hadn’t delayed the flight for so long, and weren’t now trying to be so public about it.
However, I’d lay odds that it came down to what Harvestmoon suggested, a battle of wills between two people. Otherwise, it seems like the obvious solutions would have come about quickly and none of us would have heard about this at all.
I really think that in situations of this kind, if the problem cannot be resolved in 10 minutes, the passengers should leave the plane and let the other people take off so that 150 odd people are not inconvenienced by a few.
To illustrate: I was recently on a flight in which a woman one row ahead of me, had a cat and had been given a cat carrier by the airline. But…the cat carrier had a defect in it and the cat kept getting out. The woman and her cat had to leave the plane. This was Southwest. One person or one family or people who refuse to sit next to women or whatever the problem is, should not delay the entire system. First that plane is late getting to its destination. Then it’s ongoing trip is delayed, then the next leg and so on.
I do think it is true that we cannot get into the heads of these parents. Perhaps the relatives in coach were scattered all over the place so the parents did not think of that as a solution. Certainly they could not have had the child sit in coach on her own. Since both parents would have been needed to sit on either side of the child in first class, it would have been up to a family member to offer to move to coach. Obviously none of them did for reasons not known to us. Who knows what the dynamics are of that extended family.
I can’t believe it took a full hour to resolve this issue. I have to wonder how many solutions were offered that were not agreeable to all parties. An hour? That is a long time to solve a problem like this.
But planning ahead is important, and that seems to,be the missing piece in this story. The family bought a ticket, but did not plan on how this your child would actually ride in the plane. This could so easily have been avoided with a simple call to the airline for accommodations.
The family admitted buying the coach seat for the daughter with no intention of using it to get past TSA. They expected to be allowed to have her on a lap and it had previously worked. But, this FA was not having it and she was right and the airline initially backed her up with a statement. Then, after a Twitter fuss and a few morning shows the airline apologized.
I actually read all 14 pages, goes to show you that I have more time than I need.
If I had a disabled child, before I traveled I would do a lot of due diligence first - 1) equipments I would need on the plane for my kid to be safe, 2) meet the airline’s requirements (contacting them first), 3) how to transport the child once I arrived, 4) if the destination would have proper medical care for my child…Now, if I by chance forgot something, like checking with the airline prior to boarding, it shouldn’t be the airline’s responsibility to fix my mistake. If the mother was such an advocate for her child then she should have done her homework before she took her child on vacation. As others have mentioned, this is a well traveled family. They are going to Mexico in few months on another vacation. If I traveled that often I would have done a lot more research to ensure my kid’s safety.
I don’t understand how they got around the Dominican Republic without a car seat for her. I know when we tried to rent car seats in the Caribbean it was a disaster. How much easier to bring your own and place it one the child’s seat on the airplane too! They must have a special seat that helps to properly support her body - at least I hope they do.
But they probably held her on their laps then too, telling themselves that it is perfectly safe.
I couldn’t copy and paste it but there’s an account by a FA of sudden turbulence causing two lap children to fly over a dozen rows, hit the bulkhead, and get his by bags falling out of the overhead bins. The NTSB wants to require safety seats for all children, the FAA recommends it but doesn’t require it (yet). The argument is that it will too expensive to fly, and then the families will drive which is more dangerous. Strange argument.
“This family is in a really bad situation. I like to cut them some slack.”
This was not an emergency where they were called to an airport to rush to a dying member’s bedside. This was a planned, leisurely vacation where they had had ample time to call the airline and make appropriate arrangements, bring a car seat, or ask for an exemption.
Lots of people are in bad situations, dstark. I wasn’t kidding when I said I boarded a flight once with tears running down my face and I sobbed and blew my nose all the way from BWI to TPA because I just had found out about a family member’s suicide. That wouldn’t have given me the right to insist that the FAs cut me slack and excuse me from using my seatbelt or putting my seat in the upright position for takeoff / landing. If you just “cut safety slack” for one person, how do you avoid having everyone claim that they desire slack cut, too?
It is very clear from what’s described that once the family was made aware that the child needed her own seat, they did not act in good faith to figure out how best to accomplish that speedily – using coach seats if necessary – but rather fought back until the pilot had to get involved. It shouldn’t have taken an hour. If they were acting in good faith, they would have said - it’s hard for us to prop her - the FA would have said - if we move you back to coach, we can have you prop her more effectively and keep her closer to you -and the family would have said - great idea! we have relatives back in coach, we’ll trade with them.
Strange argument indeed. You can’t drive from NJ to the Dominican Republic…or to many other places where folks fly.
The family probably didn’t have to “get around” the DR. They likely stayed at an all inclusive which had van or bus transportation from the airport. I would imagine they gate checked a wheel chair type thing that they used to move around the resort…and the airports. These are terrific chairs that often have a surface insert similar to a high chair. They are usually custom made for these kiddos to provide proper support. Some also recline.
Anyway…hopefully this is resolved. I sure hope the family makes advanced flying arrangements for their next trip in advance. It will save them aggrevation and everyone else the same…plus the time.
I am very skeptical of the woman’s reporting of what happened. We’ve only heard one side. We don’t know what the flight attendant said or how she said it. We don’t know how long the plane was actually delayed and what all the reasons were for delay. We don’t know what the seating arrangements were when the family has traveled before – maybe they have gotten away with telling the FA’s that the child was under age 2 in the past, but now the child has grown large enough that they can’t get away with that anymore.
We also don’t now the wording of UA’s “apology” – they might have received a call or a letter which essentially says “we are sorry but” (“We are very sorry that you felt embarrassed; however FAA regulation specify …”)
@DStark, I don’t know what it’s like to be the parent of a special needs child, but I do know what it is like to fly with a child with a temporary disability (3 year old with a broken leg, full leg cast). I know that with the kid with the broken leg I contacted the airline in advance to discuss policies, we made sure to inform the gate agent of the child’s needs ahead of time at every point, and & we shlepped an FAA-approved car-seat through various airports for a child who otherwise wouldn’t have needed one, precisely because we were concerned that the child wouldn’t be able to sit comfortably in an upright, face forward position in a regular coach seat.
FAA rules do not exist to be “bent” – and one of the rules of flying is that passengers are expected to obey the instructions of the flight crew – no arguing allowed. Often on crowded flights the crew does need to re-seat passengers to accommodate specific needs or problems -and sometime the person being asked to give up their seat is an innocent third party. If there is discretion, then the discretion is in the hands of the crew- and passengers have to accede to that, preferably in a gracious and polite way.
Is it possible that this particular FA was rude or harsh in her demeanor? Yes… but we don’t’ know that. All we know for sure is that there the rules did require that the child be in her own seats.
Some have conditions very similar to the New Jersey child and most of the parents feel that the mom was wrong - some cite safety concerns and others describe the measures they generally take when traveling with their own children.
They were gaming the system. They had the ticket, because they knew the little girl was over the age of 2 so they ‘knew’ that she needed her own seat. I cannot understand why they didn’t have a car seat or whatever they use in a car to keep her upright. It was not ignorance, it was gaming or at minimum wishful thinking that no one would call them on it. I’m empathetic to their situation with the little girl, but I’m not at all sympathetic for their national plea for sympathy. The 11 year old or whoever was in the other seat next to the mom could have moved back to the empty seat. This wasn’t their first rodeo so to speak with traveling. There are devices and car seats that will support a child like this, perhaps the mother needs to have a chat with the child’s OT or physician before they take their next fun little vaca and hold up another plane for an hour.
A woman who was on the same flight posted a FB status that the child had been wheeled around in a stroller in the airport, and that the family was not cooperative with the FA / pilot and did not want to move back to coach.
Dstark, you keep saying that the child can’t sit up as though that’s a truth. She sits, supported, on her mother’s lap. She sits, supported, in a car seat. We are not talking about some kind of situation where the child’s body physically doesn’t bend in the middle.
And it doesn’t MATTER that developmentally she is at 6 months. The FAA regulation doesn’t say “anyone who is developmentally at 6 months can sit on a parent’s lap.” The parents are using that as justification to get around a rule they know exists. I don’t know why you don’t see through that.
If part of this was a refusal of the parents or a parent to sit in coach with the child–especially when they could simply have swapped with a relative, for doG’s sake-- my sympathy just went down to zero.
One of the commenters in the link has a child with the same disability, and she says she uses a special needs seat that supports her child in, IIRC, seven ways, and would never travel without it.
The article you linked in post #213 has some very interesting links to twitter posts, as well as many comments by readers below the article. There also is a photo which I think (not 100% sure) is of the young girl sitting in a stroller. I dont want to post it but Its linked to that article. Cute girl.
This is an all around very sad situation. Most would of course feel for this family. But it sounds like they did not cooperate and did not make themselves very likeable. One comment said that a passenger (I believe) noted that the mom waited til the plane was empty and told the flight attendant she was going to be sure the woman was fired. See below- name XXed out for privacy)
It could have, and should have been handled efficiently and while I feel badly for this family, it does sound like they were less than cooperative and not very flexible.
