Fri 13 Jul 2007
No Saying “Bye-Bye Plane?” What About “Uh-Oh?”
Posted by Liza under Current Affairs, Opinion
Updated: Continental customer service is saying, “it wasn’t us, it was ExpressJet.” So I’ve added ExpressJet contact info to the bottom of this post.
Did you read about the woman and her 19 month old son who were kicked off of a Continental Airlines flight because her toddler kept saying, “Bye-bye plane!” Worse, they booted them at the stop, not at the destination! And all this happened after an 11 hour flight delay — I’m amazed that toddler Mommy wasn’t shrieking and hysterical!
If that’s an actionable activity on an airplane, we’re in trouble. We say bye-bye to EVERYTHING. Flowers. The light. Elmo. The TV. Mommy. The car. Choo-choos. The 90% of dinner that Noah isn’t eating.
I would be dollars to donuts that Noah says bye-bye to the plane at least a dozen times when he and Jill fly to Milwaukee later this month.
We aren’t flying Continental, but I’m still going to call them and ask them to teach their staff that toddlers saying bye-bye is perfectly normal, and that there shouldn’t be a requirement that parents sedate their children before a flight.
(They don’t seem to have an email contact. But you should call them too.)
ExpressJet, whose website says, “is one of the world’s largest operators of regional aircraft—providing both commercial services to partner airlines such as Continental and Delta,” has contact info online. Here’s the message I sent:
To: customerrelations@expressjet.com
Dear ExpressJet:
I am writing to share my concern and outrage that your staff had a mother and toddler removed from a flight because the toddler persisted in irritatingly saying “Bye-bye Plane!”
I am the mother of a 17 month old son. He says “bye-bye” to EVERYTHING. Yes, it can get quite irritating. But it’s part of normal child development, and we live in a world that includes toddlers. Parents cannot reasonably be expected to sedate their children for talking, even loudly and frustratingly, even in public. Perhaps there is a niche market for “adult only” airline flights, but it is not my understanding that this was such an excursion.
Further, I find the decision to put a mother and toddler off of a plane at the stopping point, not at the departure or destination, just outrageous. How was she supposed to have managed, stranded in a random location, having already been in transit for 11 hours?
Until this issue has been resolved, I will be making my travel plans to carefully avoid needing ExpressJet’s services.
Uh-oh.
July 13th, 2007 at 9:13 am
I was talking to Dave about this just the other day. They seriously would have had to physically remove me from the plane. The activist in me would have come busting out from the deep recesses of my brain and I would have started singing “We shall overcome” and would have started shouting “OH NO, WE WONT GO”.
This is just OUTRAGEOUS. Alex also says “Bye Bye” alot.. as well as “Uh-oh”. I’d be curious to hear some comments from others who were on that flight about what happened.
July 13th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Their suggestion that the child be sedated for talking is like advocating child abuse!!
July 13th, 2007 at 11:56 am
ugh.. it just makes me sick… CBS News story
July 13th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Hmmm… I see exciting possibilities here in an entirely different direction.
Babies, toddlers, and children, not having a fully developed sense of social conversational and other norms, should be allowed to do whatever makes the flight interesting, or at least acceptable, to them. This includes talking, coloring, crying (if necessary — it clears the ears, right?), nursing, singing, etc.
On the other hand, people who presumably *do* (or at least should) have fully developed social awareness should be removed. This incldues:
- Businessmen (it’s almost always men, in my experience) who shout on their cell phones during the time before takeoff and after landing.
- All sports teams traveling together and excited about upcoming games.
- All groups of middle-aged men on their way to Las Vegas. If Chippendales is in town, all groups of middle-aged women on their way to Las Vegas.
- Ditto the above for Reno, albeit generally in smaller proportions.
- All people (again, mostly men) with wide shoulders who occupy both armrests and force the person in the middle seat (usually a woman) to spend the flight with her own shoulders scrunched inward to avoid elbowing her neighbors.
- All tall people. Every time they shift positions they nudge the seat in front of them! Every time!
- Bald people. I once had to sit behind someone bald who lowered his seat back as far as it would go, and glare off his pate caused by my reading light was highly annoying. Sheesh!
- Everyone who leaves the windowshade open on the sunny side of the plane. Or who closes it when I am feeling claustrophobic.
All of these incidents have happened, at least once and usually more than once, in my flying experience. Let’s ban ‘em all. I’ll take a plane full of chattery toddlers over the cell-phone-shouting, armrest-hogging, seat-kicking, light-glare-causing adults any day.
July 13th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
you know this hits a nerve with me… because we fly so often (Julia’s been on 18 flights in her life so far!) AND because we fly Continental so often (Kristin’s sister works for Contintental). In my mind I keep replaying that horrible flight from NYC to SLC when Julia screamed at the top of her lungs for over an hour… if they had put us off the flight at the midpoint I think I’d have slit my wrists.
As for the toddler talking, that’s ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. There are people in this world who don’t like children and when they get in a position of power it’s horrible. To lie and say that the mother threatened her! In this post 9/11 world where even JOKING about securities measures is enough to get one in serious trouble, how much worse to make a false accusation?
And I completely agree — drugging a child who is otherwise chipper and happy and talkative on a plane ride should be unspeakable. I am all for sedating babies travelling. Julia’s horrible NYC flight was because of the pain in her ears, if she’d been sedated she wouldn’t have been in pain. But now that she’s got tubes in her ears, there’s no way I’m going to just enforce a blanket policy of sedation for every flight! If the sedation is going to be good and the kindest option for her then I’ll do it. If it’s just for the comfort of strangers who (as Reno said) are most likely going to be impinging on my own comfort during the flight, then I say screm them.
I hope that attendant gets fired and the rest of the attendants get training.
July 13th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
This is over the top, but I sympathize with people who want a little peace and quiet on a plane. I have long advocated that there should be two sections to each plane. “Noisy” and “Quiet.”
If you have a small child with you, or can’t be off your cell phone for more than 30 seconds (the day they allow cell phones in flight I will swear off flying forever), or if you’re just one of those people who insists on talking to the stranger next to you, then you sit in the Noisy section.
The Quiet section will be people like me who just want to read, or listen to headphones, or try to catch some sleep.
It wouldn’t be perfect, but it’s a far cry better than sedation.
July 13th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
As laid back and friendly as I am… I’d probably snap on someone who tried to tell me I should drug my child (I give him baby tylenol for his ears, but, I can’t imagine doing more than that).
Oh, and we’ll be sitting on the quiet side of the plane. I’ve gotten really lucky in that my rambunctious toddler, on all eight flights I’ve taken him on, has been really reserved. But, if he hadn’t, I would hope that the people around us could understand that a child isn’t as aware of those ’social norms’ of being quiet on an airplane.
July 13th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
I’ve been in the “noisy section” with malka a few times, actually - it’s called the back of the plane.
thankfully, they tend to put all of the babies and parents in the same spot.
I just wish is wasn’t near the chatty flight attendants and the bathroom….
July 14th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Ha! While Reno had the funniest suggestion, I really like the idea of a “quiet” section and/or “noisy” section.
Flying alone, I would LOVE to sit in the quiet section, and flying with Noah, I would certainly accept being in the “noisy” section. At least then everyone would have a reasonable idea of what to expect, and not be afraid of being kicked of being too loud.
July 15th, 2007 at 9:16 am
They actually do that on some trains. There are cars where cell phones are banned (and pagers set to vibrate) specifically so other passengers can read/nap/etc. I don’t know if toddlers are banned from the quiet cars.
As to one of the items in Reno’s post. I have been the person in the middle seat with a slightly bigger than a coach seat guy in the aisle seat to my left, and a small petite young woman in the window seat. I spent the next 5 hours flying to Iceland forced slightly to the right feeling my lower back disintegrate as I tried not to collapse toward the stranger on my right. Probably part of the origin of the lower back problems I have today and undoubtedly the worst air travel experience in my life.
On the other hand I can’t throw stones as I am on the edge of that state myself.
Not being a parent, I know I am skating on thin ice here, but I don’t feel that babies get a totally free pass to do anything because they don’t know better. There are limits. Whether this mother was over them I can’t say as I wasn’t there. It doesn’t sound like it. The Parents do have some duty to society to teach their kids proper behavior. I know my Sisters had to be stern with my niece and nephews on the subject of “Indoor Voice” On the other hand sedation just to shut the kid up is not the right answer. I think in generally our society has become WAY too quick to reach for the Prescription Pad for a lot of things.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Parents certainly have the responsibility to make all reasonable efforts to keep their children from disturbing other passengers, whether that’s kicking the seat in front of them, screaming, crying, trying to climb over seats, physically expressing interest in hair, clothes, glasses, etc, or whatever.
Drugs, of course, may not fall into the reasonable category. That seems like a call for the parent and the kid’s doctor, depending on the circumstances.
That said, sometimes, nothing works. Especially with toddlers. They want to exercise free will and control over their environment, just like anyone else, but they have few options and no sense of “later.”
Sometimes they just get pissed off about it, and they have no hesitation about letting anyone who might help know how they feel.
For example, in Noah’s case, he has a huge screaming crying fit approximately 90% of the time that we either put him in his car seat, or change his diaper. Other physically restraining activities generally produce similar reactions — and while we are working on the idea of an indoor voice, it hasn’t really taken yet.
July 19th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
This is when you know that the US is NOT Albania, where they actually LIKE kids. A lot. This would have been shocking to me when I lived in the US. Now, it is just unimagineable. On a plane with Albanians, every person on the plane would have been smiling at that child, whisking him away to their seats to play for a few moments, and probably feeding him. (and to my frequent dismay as the american parent of a toddler in albania, feeding him candy!)