The Traveller's Magazine
It only took one tweet from Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson for the whole “children should be banned on flights” conversation to pop up again. The Telegraph polled its readers and it turns out that the majority are actually in favour of it.
Clarkson recently suggested to his Twitter following, and the rest of the world for that matter, that his flight to Scotland wasn’t all that great by tweeting,
When will British Airways realise that babies belong in the hold?
Babies on planes have long been a topic among parent travel forums, travel blogs and it’s an unending debate. We’ve even covered it on the Traveller’s blog before with How to fly long-haul with kids in tow.
And it seems, according to Telegraph Travel polls, that the majority of readers would support child-free flights, something Air Asia X launched back in February and that has been met with sounding reviews. Unruly children, again according to the Telegraph, remain the biggest annoyance for passengers, even more than drunken passengers, bad-tempered cabin crew and extra-chatty neighbours.
We’ve even heard of one American couple who took their infant twin boys on their first flight and handed out treat bags to all the other passengers with a note saying, “We’re twin baby boys on our first flight and we’re only 14 weeks old! We’ll try to be on our best behaviour, but we’d like to apologise in advance just in case we lose our cool, get scared or our ears hurt. Our mom and dad (AKA our portable milk machine and our diaper changer) have ear plugs available if you need them.”
As travellers are child-free flights something we’ll likely see in the future of air travel? We can imagine they may take the form of a typical Ryanair service: passengers paying a premium or additional fee to sit in an “adult-only zone” on an aircraft.
Would you pay extra to fly on a child-free flight and how much do you think that kind of service is worth?
Why don’t we see child-rearing as a societal responsibility? We are all humans, and aren’t we all trying to propagate and advance our species? Why is the burden placed on the people who choose to have children on our behalf?
Some of us can’t have children (for myriad reasons), and there is a huge stigma against adopting (there must be something wrong with the parents biologically if someone chooses to adopt, right?). Millions of children remain in orphanages until they age out.
I think our world would be a LOT better if we recognized that all of our actions effect everyone else. That it is all of our responsibility to respect and help each other out when we can.
-Carmen
Feminist/Humanitarian, Mexican-American, Med Student
And under no circumstances should children be allowed in first class.
What if they just had a baby section that was discounted for families? I don’t know how fair it is to make regular customers pay a premium for baby-free seating..
Discounted for families? I don’t see that as fair. Those of us without children shouldn’t have to pay more to cover your discounted tickets. Why not discounts for those without children instead as we’re more likely to be better customers. Childfree people already pay for other children’s schooling and maternity leave, maybe it’s time we got something back?