If the TSA discovers my hypothetical full size toothpaste, there’s no “gray.” It’s gone. It doesn’t matter if I’ve gotten away with it before, if I am a toothpaste model for Crest, if I am going to a land where they don’t sell toothpaste, if I have $1000 designer toothpaste. It’s gone. It’s unambiguous. I may privately think it’s silly, but whatever.
The FAA reg is similarly unambiguous. Why do you keep saying it’s gray? Just bc the enforcement has been inconsistent doesn’t mean the regulation is gray or mutable.
Once alerted to the situation, what should the pilot have done? There ARE no other choices. Belt her in her own seat as best as we can, or get off the plane. Mom, your move.
“No IDs… I am sure this rule is enforced in the strictest way possible”
The no ID thing is a little weird to me. Not for babies, of course, but when my kids were older teens and traveled, TSA would ask them if they were under 18. If they said no, they would let them go without checking their ID. Well…how do they know their age without checking their ID, why would they just take their word for it? They could have been baby faced terrorists for all they knew. My younger kid always looked young, until he grew a beard.
And as far as lap babies, I’m sure if a kid looks pretty young, most FA’s would walk on by if they’re in the parent’s lap. How are they supposed to know how old they are? The only way I can think of is when the agent gives a manifest, they know the total number of lap babies. The flight attendant in first class would know if there are any lap babies in that section, because there are so few passengers in first class that they generally even have a list of names.
“Telling the mother the child needs to sit in her own seat? You know I don’t like that. Letting the daughter sit on the mother’s lap? Is there another solution?”
No. Unless you want to get silly and stupid suggestions, like suspend her from the ceiling or put her in the overhead baggage claim. There are no other solutions other than what the pilot did. He DIDN’T bend the rule.
A policeman clocks me driving 80 mph when the speed limit is 65. The policeman pulls me over. He asks me, “How fast was I going ?”
I respond, “65 mph”.
The policeman says, “Ok. You are free to go”. Lol
The rule is self enforced. The safety issue is so important that kids under 2 can fly on their parents laps. The safety issue is so important kids’ ages aren’t checked.
I have said the pilot did the right thing.
The safety issue is gone. This rule is enforced haphazardly at best.
The scamming issue is gone. The safety issue is gone. The mother is entitled issue is still left. Somebody call the mother and ask her if she has a sense of entitlement. Lol
Oops, I don’t think anyone needs to call mom and ask her if she is a you know what…
Her attempt to get the flight attendant fired speaks for itself.
And who knows, maybe the flight attendant is supporting her family and has a disabled child herself, depending on that insurance and income. Kind of sounds like rich and entitled, trying to get middle income fired. Person getting first class services trying to get the person working for the first class passengers fired, for not showing appropriate respect and allowing them to break the rules. One could look at it as another class warfare situation. That sounds kind of …you know what to me.
Yes, we already know what it was—having Ivy strapped into her own seat for take off and landing while in a reclining position with her head propped up for support on the lap of a parent next to her.
If Ivy’s assigned seat had been next to her mother (whether that was in biz class or economy), this solution probably would have been suggested rather quickly. Her head would have been on her mom’s lap instead of her dad’s. Several hundred other people would not have been inconvenienced.
It isn’t true…at least on this flight. This was an international flight. Children need passports. You don’t get on an international flight with a child without one. If you managed to do it, you’d never get the child back into the US through immigration. Additionally, here’s a link to UA’s rules:
Moreover, at least some airlines require you to provide a birth certificate for any “lap” children to prove you don’t have to buy a ticket on domestic flights.
You are assuming that because Ms. K has a disabled child that every word out of her mouth is true. I don’t. Again, I went back to the original tweet and there is NOTHING in it about the exchange in which the FA allegedly said the child had to sit and the mom said she’d cut off her left arm to make that happen. This is what it says:
If the FA had said that the child had to sit in just the way mom later claimed., IME, the mom’s first tweet would have said so. It would not have said the FA said “she needed to be placed in her seat.”
And, second, the whole focus of the mom’s complaint initially was that, according to the other FAs, the FAs had the discretion to waive the rule and the FA manual said so. In the first tweet and the first interview, the complaint is that the FA had the power to waive enforcement of the rule–and United’s flight manual says so–and this mean b(&CH and yes, that’s the word mom used on twitter–wouldn’t. It wasn’t that the FA was rude, only that she kept arguing with them.
UA has said publicly that the FAs do not have the right to waive the rule and that the flight manual doesn’t say they do. So, even if the mom honestly thought, based on something the other FAs said, that the FA had the power to waive the rule according to the manual–and frankly, I don’t believe that for a nanosecond–now that she knows that this is NOT the case, SHE owes the FA an apology for trying to get her fired for doing her job.
In determining whether I believe Ms. K, I’ve taken into account the changes she made about certain other aspects of the story–notably what the pilot’s “resolution” was and the fact she is trying to argue with a straight face that the she was shocked by the fact that you have to buy a seat for a child over 24 months means the child has to sit in it for take off and landing.I also don’t quite “buy” the argument that having a boarding pass for coach gives you the right to sit on your mom’s lap in biz.
Now, if you want to say it’s reasonable to make an exception and give this child an accommodation, well, that’s a viable argument. But who should decide whether there should be an accommodation? I think it’s the FAA, not an individual airline. It CERTAINLY is NOT an individual FA!
This is really it, in a nutshell. Having the OPTION to comply with the regulations if the FA decided to enforce them–by having a vacant seat right next to a parent’s–would not have been difficult at ALL for this family to do. But they wanted everyone to get to sit in first class rather than steerage. Their choice.
Jonri, it doesn’t matter if the flight is international or domestic.
If this was really a safety issue, the rule would be enforced domestically.
The rule is enforced haphazardly. I actually think this is a safety issue, but it really isn’t treated that way. Probably economics plays a part as another posted suggested. Economics can trump safety.
But whatever…
The rule IS enforced domestically. I’ve seen it a hundred times. The child must be buckled in for take off and landing, and THEN the child (or an adult for that matter) can sit on the mother’s lap.
I’ll bet that never before was the child a lap child when the seat wasn’t right next to the mother. Should the FA made sure the child was buckled into the seat and not held during take off? Yes. Was it Okay that she wasn’t? No.
Is every seat back and tray table raised when the FA’s make that request? Is every cell phone and Kindle property turned off? No, but it doesn’t change the rules that require they be, and you can’t use the fact that another FA didn’t properly secure the cabin as your excuse the next time.
Your birth date is entered when you purchase the ticket. They’ve always known if my kids need to show an ID or not. If you are claiming lap child (under age 2) it’s your responsibility to show a passport or birth certificate to prove under two or they can deny boarding.
I suspect that the reason that the rule is enforced haphazardly is because most people who have purchased a ticket for their child over two will want them to sit in their seat. I doubt it is often even an issue, because people either have a safety seat for their child, or put them in the seat. Most people are not going to want the child in their lap for the flight if they have actually purchased a seat next to them. I’m sure it is rarely a problem. Plus, people are scurrying onboard, the flight attendants are trying to orchestrate everything to get out as soon as possible, that’s probably one of the last things they are thinking about, trying to figure out how old a child is and if they should be sitting in a seat.
However, if you know you have no lap babies in first class, and magically one appears, that would be far more obvious.
" Once you are on the plane, do the flight attendants know how old you are?"
I certainly hope not…
I can’t speak for flight attendants, but I seriously doubt it. They do, however, know how many lap babies there are, and I’m pretty sure that they know where they are sitting.
Somebody please refresh my failing memory. The family of 16 had 16 seats: 12 in first/business class and 4 in coach. Somewhere its been established that all 4 coach seats were occupied by other family members, leaving the empty seat for Ivy in first class. So unless I am missing something, is there something complicated about having that assigned seat for Ivy next to mom? Or would that have made it harder for mom to plead her case? I have sympathy for mom and Ivy, but really, this isn’t that hard.
“If this was really a safety issue, the rule would be enforced domestically”
So you’re saying it’s not a safety issue? It’s just a random bully-parents-of-small kids rule?
It’s a safety issue to put your tray table up, yet not every single tray table gets up esp in a big plane. Nonetheless, the FA has the full right to MAKE you do so. Yep.
While one blog said that extended family members took the coach seats so that these 6 could sit together, it is unclear whether they did -
4 in coach, 12 in premium - which would leave the empty seat in premium (12 people occupying 11 seats)
Or
3 in coach, leaving 1 empty, and 13 in premium (13 people in premium occupying 12 seats) under the assumption that if Ivy was going to be the lap child, why not bring an extra person up to premium (which is how I’d think, under normal circumstances)
Jonri suspects the latter (which is where they got the initial impression “you bought a seat for her back there?”) and I suspect she’s right.
^^ I agree. I have little doubt that the empty seat was in coach. And that Elit “the Israeli girl”–her description-- wasn’t about to move back to coach so that Ivy could sit in a seat and still be supported by a parent. No, she wanted everything HER way, and no peon FA should DARE to question her.
“Now I am really p@@@@@. The ages of the kids aren’t checked. Seriously? How do you enforce the rule then? I know what we can do…Let’s go after the parents of the kid who can’t talk, walk, sit on her own, and support her own head.”
Um. No one was “going after” anybody, dstark. It’s not punitive in nature to enforce safety regulations, any more than it’s punitive if the TSA throws away my toothpaste or the FA tells me to stay in my seat during turbulence.
What you’re not getting, dstark,is that this FA would have done the EXACT same thing if she had noticed a 3-yo “normal” child on a parent’s lap. This wasn’t get-the-disabled-day. The major job of a FA is safety. Not getting blankets and pillows or fixing your drink, but ensuring safety procedures are followed.
