Oh, I’m so sorry for that family’s loss. This hurts to hear it.
Dstark, it’s stories like this which are bothersome when people adopt a cavalier “oh, cut them some slack, bend the rules” attitude. Better the FA be “mean” than this woman lose her child like the Tsao family did.
“The safety first argument would be more convincing if it wasn’t arbitrarily defined as ok for a 23.5 month old of any weight, even much heavier than Ivy, to be held on a lap”
Many people feel it isn’t safe for anyone, even a newborn (or maybe especially a newborn) to not be belted in. I had a 2 year old who weighed 18 pounds. It wasn’t safe for her to be a lap child or just in an adult belt. I was the parent. I knew that to protect my child I needed her in a car sear. She weighed 32 pounds at 5.5 years. Still needed a car seat.
But the fact is we make arbitrary rules based on age all the time. Getting a driver’s licenses. Smoking age. Starting school. Joining the boy scouts. Some kids really aren’t mature enough, but because the majority are, we set that as the age. I guess sometimes we just expect the parents to make the final decision, and if a 23 month old is a 35# kid, maybe the family should think “hey, this kid needs his own seat.”
Couldn’t a pilot just turn on the seat belt sign, announce that the plane is entering turbulence, and if the hijackers keep trying to break into the cockpit, practice aerobatics?
“Couldn’t a pilot just turn on the seat belt sign, announce that the plane is entering turbulence, and if the hijackers keep trying to break into the cockpit, practice aerobatics?”
First of all, if hijackers are trying to break into the cockpit, the passengers are going to know, so practicing subterfuge like that would be pretty meaningless. And of course, you know how few people even would pay attention to the announcement. Something like that is not recommended at all, and is an absolute last ditch effort. Chances are, it would injure more passengers than hijackers. However, in life or death situations, anything is on the table.
Be careful with what you ask for. Plenty of corrupt people bend the rules when the situation warrants it from their own point of view. For example, counterfeit airplane parts sometimes fool airline mechanics and get installed in airplanes.
I wonder if the pilot would have kicked her off the plane if she wasn’t part of a party of 16 or 17 depending on reports. An hour is a lot of bickering over a seat. And, we have the mom’s version of events so there is no more information that is going to help her in this situation.
I actually find it very hard to believe that a full hour delay was because of this only. I really can’t believe it. It seems to me that an adequate solution should have been worked out in a couple of minutes. However, I can’t imagine someone kicking off a mom and her disabled child…even to prevent such a delay. And these things happen minute by minute, I’m sure nobody could have guessed how much time it would take. And I still hardly believe it took an hour to work this out.
Then again, this is the mom’s story, who also claimed that they send baggage handlers in to yell at her. Baggage handlers? Seriously? I doubt it. Or perhaps she was misquoted.
From her disingenuous remarks about United making the determination on which pax in her party got the upgrade, her lack of forthrightness about how she must have transported the child to the airport in a carseat, and her public vindictiveness about wanting the flight attendant fired, I get the impression she is quite manipulative and that this isn’t the first time she has used her child’s condition to shame people into submission.
All in all, it is interesting to me to see how much sympathy and support this woman has generated for United, though clearly that was NOT her intention. I’m very glad that most other passengers, even though many have their own special needs and hurts and pain do NOT cause this level of fuss and disruption that this woman caused on her flight and is attempting to cause now.
As far as I can tell, the pilot’s “solution” was that the child was placed in her own seat, next to her father, belted in, with her butt in her seat and her head on her father’s lap. Maybe the father moved back to coach, where there was an empty seat and the arm rests could be raised. Maybe I’m mistaken, but the bottom line is that the pilot wouldn’t take off without a belt around the kid. If it was anything else, my guess is that the pilot could potentially be in serious trouble – the FAA has the power to yank a pilot’s license so I don’t think the pilot would have any choice but to insist that the kid be placed in a seat with appropriate restraint, given that the entire flight crew and many passengers on the plane could see what was going on.
It’s one thing when a FA looks the other way – it’s quite another to expect that the pilot is going to affirmatively approve a violation of FAA regs. This one isn’t even close – it’s not as if the child were only a few days past her 2nd birthday - she’s over age 3, and the parents were aware that they needed to purchase a seat for her.
Dstark, you don’t “support saying the child can sit” even when there are pictures showing her sitting? Of course she can SIT. She just can’t sit without SUPPORT which is why it was incumbent on parents to bring a car seat just like she uses on the ground.
And note the pilot’s solution WAS to sit her in her own seat, not acquiesce to lap-child. Because lap-child is dangerous, not something dreamed up by meanie FAs who have it out for poor defenseless parents of special needs kids.
Calmom makes a very good point here. I do not think that the pilot should have been put in a position of risking the loss of his license once the situation started to escalate.
As the parent of a child with a severe disability I am normally hesitant to pass judgement, but I think that the regulations should have been spelled out in the handbook with greater clarity, perhaps noting that a child under 25 pounds might be permitted to sit in the parent’s lap only if their chronological age is less than two. It might also be a good idea to make everyone aware of adaptive equipment that is permissible under these circumstances, and any documentation that might be necessary to allow adaptive equipment for an older child aboard the flight. Perhaps, since others have pointed out that a child of that weight could become a dangerous projectile, no child or infant should be permitted to sit in a parent’s lap during take-off or landing no matter their chronological age, and parents can plan accordingly whether or not their child has special needs? I do not think it is any less dangerous for a two year old to be on a parent’s lap, yet this is allowed.
I can also understand how the mother might have gotten defensive once aware that she might not be able to stay on the return flight (perhaps others convinced her that there was no need to go to the trouble to bring a special seat along, and then have to schlep it through security along with the child and all the baggage that comes with traveling with a small child and convince any doubting FA of its necessity), and I could also see myself becoming distraught if confronted in this manner, and could only hope that any relatives traveling with me would work to defuse the situation and arrive at a solution well before I got to the point where I was demanding the FA be fired. I also think that we do not have a full picture of how this unfolded, and steps that the flight crew might have tried to take to accommodate. The first accommodation I noticed was that the mother, child, and other disruptive relatives were not immediately kicked off the plane or arrested, as might have happened to an individual with a “hidden disability” or a distraught passenger with no disability, so I am guessing that there was some sympathy for the family’s plight and perhaps awareness on the part of the airline of the PR disaster that could ensue from excluding the family from the flight.
If the grandfather indeed had as many miles as is suggested, he could have been UA global services (highest level, invitation-only) and it’s my understanding a FA would know of a GS passenger on board. You don’t want to tick off your GS customers.