But your situation is different. You already had provided required documentation, but the employee on the other end had lost or misplaced it.
This is a case where the parents had an obligation to (a) buy a seat for the 3 year old, (b) arrive at the airport with the proper equipment to support that child in the seat – either an FAA-approved car seat or a CARES restraint harness.
Your situation is more analogous to situations where parents do buy seats for their infants and toddlers, but then are told by ignorant or impatient flight crew that they are not allowed to used their equipment.
We get it: it’s hard to parent a severely disabled child. It can be extremely frustrating when others are rude or condescending.
However, parents of disabled children also have a responsibility to be proactive and to consider their child’s safety. In this case the parents are angry because a flight attendant was taking action to protect their child. As others have pointed out, if there had been sudden turbulence during takeoff and the child had fallen from the parent’s lap and been injured, the airlines would have been liable.
It’s similar to a situation where you are giving a ride to some other parent who doesn’t want to put their child in a car seat-- perhaps because the child is fussing or it is a mom who wants to nurse her baby. I wouldn’t do it. I used to tell my own kids that my car couldn’t be started until everyone was belted and strapped in the appropriate way. That habit was passed on – I know that when my daughter was in high school giving rides to friends she always insisted that they buckle up. Including a friend who had a significant physical disability. That particular friend was later killed in a terrible car accident when a passenger in a car driven by another young adult friend - in that case, the driver and all occupants were killed as the car rolled over and was smashed. I have no idea whether the young people were belted in or not. But the point is, accidents happen. The person who is in charge of the vehicle, whether the driver of a car or the flight crew of a plane, is ultimately responsible for the safety of their passengers.
And I do understand that sometimes it is tough. When my grandson was in a cast it was a complicated and difficult task to get him physically placed in the car seat and properly belted in, especially as he threw some huge tantrums when he didn’t want to get in the seat. It was often uncomfortable for him and he did complain of pain – and no it was not fun to be the parent/grandparent of a kid strapped into a seat moaning that his leg was hurting – it would have been nice to have been able to hold him in our laps and comfort him instead. (Fortunately he had a vicodin prescription from the doctor who set his leg - I don’t know how we would have made it through that first plane trip without it.)
I just don’t feel that “disability” should be an excuse for foregoing safety rules. I do understand that 99% of the time there is not an accident and so the safety precautions weren’t needed – something that was a great relief on the rare occasions that I discovered after a trip was completed that the car seat had not been properly secured or that the kid had somehow managed to wriggle free of the harness. But that’s just not a good reason for foregoing the safety concern. I don’t buy the idea that this disabled child is somehow less worthy than her siblings of having the protection of proper restraint equipment when the parents fly.
@Jonri, i noticed that nowhere on the baby-vest product webpage does it say the device is FAA approved.
The FAA has not approved any “baby belts” that are secured onto the parent’s seat belt. The use of any device that’s non FAA certified is up the discretion of the airline. Many airlines disallow non FAA certified devices bcs they expose the airline to liability issues.
It says “after takeoff” you thread the parent’s belt through and do whatever. It’s more of a comfort device that frees the parents a bit during flight, especially if they have a squirmy kid. It’s cute though.
@dstark, no, I don’t know her personally, but I know enough from her horrible fb and twitter posts and lines like #enjoyunemployment.
“These posts have very little to do with this family or United Airlines. These posts are just little windows into our minds”
And what is your analysis? That people on this thread are more callous, uncaring and cruel than you’d thought? That the reason that people will not cut this woman a break though she has a disabled child, is because they can’t understand the pain she must be going through? I do admire your tenacity is staying on this thread, while most everyone is disagreeing with you, by the way.
Or maybe you could consider the possibility that everyone has bad things in their life going on. Everyone. Some not so bad, and some things far worse. Some people have a deceased child, and I can’t imagine anything more devastating than that. But people make it work and try to not hold up other people as a matter of consideration for others, regardless of their personal situation.
I had what was easily the worst day of my life on a flight. I suffered a miscarriage earlier that morning, and took the flight because I needed to get home to my son. Severely depressed, unable to speak, looking at what I supposed to be the remains of my baby in the airplane toilet. People on flights can be suffering all sorts of ways. You have no idea, but you work together so everyone can get home, or to wherever they are going.
In the interest of accuracy, here’s a page containing the bike picture. Ivy is seated behind her dad but she has a padded shoulder harness which appears to support her head somewhat. I would assume she has something similar on her car seat. The same page shows the mom’s tweet about getting the FA fired.
I have the strong impression that this was a case of Godzilla vs Mothra.
In my admittedly limited experience of DR baggage handlers–gleaned on one trip about 30 years ago–they would be too busy opening every checked bag and stealing the contents to respond to any requests to move a handicapped individual. B-)
We get a sliver of what is going on in a person’s life online. Just a sliver. I have done things that people think are great and I have done things that people don’t like too much.
Why are we so quick to judge?
By the way… The people I am dealing with for my daughter have different views of what is going on. I realize that. I an writing my views.
I was a trader on a trading floor and this broker was behaving badly. I tokd his boss to rein in him. The boss fired him. I didn’t know I had that much power.
I said rein in him… Not fire him. I apologized to the guy who got fired. He told me, “It’s ok. no problem”. He could have said, “You are an as…”. He didn’t do that. I was too.
There were a lot of guys on the floor. The names are fading frim my memory. I still remember this guy. He was going through he… too. But I was young and wasn’t paying attention to his issues and how it was affecting his behavior. I didn’t care… Until he got fired.
It’s hard to not judge when that person is putting it all out there for people to see, though. I doubt people would be so judgmental if another passenger had posted this information about what happened, but this lady is trying to get the FA fired and embarrass United. She is the person putting it out there for people to read or listen to, I just think she hadn’t expected anything but agreement about how she was wronged.
Nothing surprises me on flights anymore and I never expect to take off on time - there is always something - weather, mechanical problem or passengers holding up the boarding process. I always avoid short layovers for that reason. I also happen to like some of the airport lounges.
Worst thing that I ever witnessed was years back when I booked a last minute flight. The woman sitting next to me had some sort of confrontation with another woman up one row and across the aisle about an overhead bin. Both were in aisle seats. I was last to board so did not witness it, but apparently my seat companion thought this woman had gotten the best of her. When a meal was served she took her dinner roll and threw it across the aisle and klonked the other woman in the head - I kid you not. When she was confronted she told the FA it flew across the aisle as she was prying open the plastic bag. She lied. I buried my head in my book not wishing to involve myself with people who throw dinner rolls. She was obviously a loon.
It is hard not to judge. We should try not to judge anyway.
I am sorry about your miscarriage. My wife also miscarried. As a man, I have no idea what it is like to have a baby inside me. I have no idea what it is like to give birth or miscarry.
I don’t pretend I do know what it is like.
Again… I am sorry about your miscarriage.
I imagine losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to a person. I don’t want to find out.
This mother launched a social media campaign against the airline before leaving the tarmac. We are supposed to judge, but she figured everyone would be on her side which was a miscalculation.
You know, it really could have been handled/perceived in this way after the whole thing went down:
It’s possible for two perfectly good human beings to see this in two opposite ways. FA is coming from a safety/liability/rules perspective, Mom is coming from her own personal perspective of caring for her disabled daughter. It all worked out and everyone got where they needed to go.
But no, Mom has to go after this FA’s livelihood? If those FB posts are authentic, I think she has behaved really badly after the fact, independent of what went down on that airplane.
Yes, it seems the mother was judging from the moment the incident began. From her Tumblr account:
First of all, how does she know the staff brought onto the plane were “baggage handlers”? And second, umm…you just vacationed in a Spanish-speaking country. Of course the people on the ground speak Spanish.
Yeah, I doubt they called in baggage handlers to explain the safety rules. This is part of the entitlement problem that drips from the mom. She is extremely unlikeable.
@Dstark, while you are adamantly refraining from “judging” - I suggest that you consider to be equally nonjudgmental about the flight attendant who made the call – after all you don’t know what her experience has been:
According to the complaining mom, the FA who insisted on the child being in a seat was “senior” to the others – maybe she had the experience to have personally witnessed. Perhaps she was on this United Airlines flight less than a year ago – or heard about it from colleagues:
I think it’s reasonable to assume that a more experienced flight attendant would also be more likely to have directly witnessed incidents such as these and/or come into contact with other flight attendants who had.
