Children are allowed in business and first class because airlines want to sell tickets. Families buy more than one ticket at a time! While airlines promote buying up to a premium cabin for rest, they don’t promote the product you’re buying as child-free. And as a business or first class passenger you don’t have a moral claim to inflict the screaming on other passengers in the larger economy cabin.
The surprising reason to many who travel in premium cabins is this very simple principle: a child crying and disturbing passengers in domestic first class is not worse than disturbing passengers in economy.
So this United Airlines passenger berating a woman whose two year old cried “for five min[utes]” is 100% wrong:
@UnitedAirlines flight 360 yest. from John Wayne to ORD, persons in seats 1A and 1B berated me & my 2yo stating we didn’t belong in business class (he cried for five mins and only that long because they were yelling at me and I cried). @PassengerShame @shitUAdoes pic.twitter.com/jiXATlg153
— apz (@realashpint) June 23, 2023
Miss Manners says children are fine, that business class doesn’t advertise ‘no children’ (though airlines do promote rest, then-United CEO declared “sleep is the new black” when introducing their Polaris product in 2016). United expressly allows children in business class. Some airlines even offer child discounts in business class.
A decade ago Malaysia Airlines created a ‘no children’ zone on the upper deck of its Airbus A380s, and that was for economy. Airlines used to have ‘no smoking’ sections, but smoke wafted. Screams waft, too. But a double decker aircraft was one way to make the separate seating area meaningful.
Japan Airlines seat maps will show where children are seated so you can avoid them. The downside though is it shows creeps where children are on the plane so they can sit next to them.
George and Amal Clooney gave out their own-branded noise cancelling headhphones when they fly commercial with their kids. Oddly they do this in international first class where noise cancelling headphones are provided. Still it’s the thought that counts (and the self-promotion).
I think what’s important isn’t where children are allowed to sit, but what is expected of the parents which seems to me to be all about… manners, regardless of cabin. For instance don’t let kids draw on seat backs.
Ultimately there are passengers whose knowledge of aircraft etiquette is far worse than young children. People go to the lavatory with their shoes off, and then stick their feet up on the armrests of the people in front of them. Rank-ordering poor passenger etiquette we have plenty of passengers to shame before getting down the list to parents.
I don’t think you’ve got this quite right. Whether in business or in economy, every passenger has the duty to ensure that no nuisance is created for any other passenger. If a child is too young to stop screaming or otherwise unable to control himself or herself, that can be a nuisance — though as you rightly observe there are other nuisances equally wrong that can be created by adults.
I have no problem with babies on airplanes including crying babies. I’ve been on plenty of flights with them. Maybe it is because I helped my mother out with my younger sister and younger brother that the crying really doesn’t bother me. Kids kicking the back of my seat are annoying but usually an icy glare will stop it and if it doesn’t they become bored fairly quickly anyhow. Maybe the worse problem was the child with his favorite blanket that smelled like old feces seated in front of me. He and his mother seemed immune to the stink. That was a flight I was glad to be off of.
Of the hundreds of flights I’ve taken, I can say confidently, adults pax that annoy me FAR MORE than any child ever has.
Gary Leff writes, “Children are allowed in business and first class because airlines want to sell tickets. Families buy more than one ticket at a time! While airlines promote buying up to a premium cabin for rest, they don’t promote the product you’re buying as child-free.”
Passengers should know that dogs and cats are also allowed in business and first class because airlines want to sell tickets to help increase profits. And, as a business or first class passenger, you don’t have a moral claim to inflict the barking, purring, or meowing on other passengers in the larger economy cabin. With many flying pets, I wonder if American Airlines will be the first to offer dog, cat, and human food in the complimentary first-class snack basket.
While children crying can be annoying, so can adults. 1. The guy next to you who won’t stop talking no matter how many signlas you put out. 2. The adult/tween/teen who insists on using their cell phone for music or conversatin without a headset or ear buds. 3. Barefooted passengers of any age. Maybe we should ban everyone from business/first class. Then it would be quiet up front all the time.
I just flew back in business from CUN with my 4 year old and 1 year old. Because of the seating arrangement, my wife was with the kids and I was next to the douchiest guy who talked on his phone during both taxis bragging about multi-million dollar deals with clients whose names he actually said out loud (Worldwide Express being one of them) interspersed with all kinds of F bombs and other swear words. Then during the flight he blew snot rockets and snorted the entire time as if he must have been doing all sorts of cocaine during his time in Cancun. It was utterly repulsive.
Meanwhile, my 4 year old sat quietly on her iPad with headphones on while my 1 year old nursed and slept most of the flight.
There is no argument here.
My two-year-old is better behaved than the bottom 20% of “First Class” adults. I often get shocked and surprised compliments and thanks from my fellow First Class passengers after a flight.
Child training is challenging and exhausting, but follows the pattern of most things in life with a simple choice: small-to-medium upfront work/pain or huge long-term work, pain, and failure. That’s the simple choice that separates success from failure in most of life.
I realize that my family and community culture and training gave me a huge, privileged head-start. I’m doing my best to give my daughter that same privilege. (And I’ve done my parts here and there to extend as much as I can of that same privilege to folks who weren’t born with it, though probably not as much as I should have.)
This topic is getting quite old and it’s clear that the winner is the children after all. Best reply you can give to anyone who complains about your kids is if quiet is important to you, you could have flown private.
@Frank I will add one to your list, folks that really should travel with a CPAP if they insist on sleeping knowing darn well that they’re snoring is equivalent to the decibels of a rock band concert.
When a child is causing an issue on an aircraft, it’s very rarely the child’s fault. It’s almost always the fault of one or more parents who have no interest in doing any parenting or no idea how to parent.
No one with any heart gets annoyed when a child is crying or misbehaving and it’s obvious that the accompanying adults are doing their best to make things better. The problem is the generation of adults who are so obsessed with being their offspring’s best friend that they fail to do any kind of parenting and leave everyone else around them to listen to and deal with the fallout.. and not just in aircraft.
I remember one of our first flights with our first kid. We were in first class on a US domestic flight. We brought on way too much stuff since we didn’t really know what we were doing. Our kid cried a good amount even though we tried our best to calm him. Other first class passengers made funny faces at our boy to try to make him happy, which worked rather well. And then one man approached us and said “those are the sounds of life.” I’ll never forget that and have used that line myself many times when I see parents trying desperately to keep their kids quiet. After the plane got to the gate, about 3 first class passengers helped us carry all our stuff to the jetway so we could wait for the stroller.
There are many more good people than bad in the world. My guess is someone berating a mother and their child has many issues themselves.
Wouldn’t it be illegal to not allow them to travel? Age is a federally protected class and airlines are a public conveyance not a private club.
If your child acts out or cries excessively in a flight, it is 100% a reflection on your ability to parent. My guess is “5 minutes” of crying was probably an understatement. Parents believe we are all responsible for their children in some way. We wouldn’t tolerate adults screaming through a flight.
No, the passenger complaining that a kid is crying was *not* wrong, and the only people who care what Miss Manners says are people who have to ask Miss Manners what constitutes good manners.
Having read all the above, (yes, really), I have one thing to add. When a child is acting out in a grocery store there are parents who ignore it, or don’t notice it. The attentive parents take the child outside. (It is no longer ok to leave them unattended in the car.) The same is true of movie theaters. Clearly there’s some social incentive to prevent the annoyance to everyone else in the vicinity.
Onboard an A/C there’s nowhere to go. The post-911-hysteria means we can’t even “congregate in the aisles” or “next to the lavatory” or pretty much anywhere to be comfortable. Unless you’re flying Emirates or Etihad there’s no cool “lounge” to go to. You stay in your seat, don’t look the F/A in the eye with an “ugly face” and hope you don’t get booted off the flight — not because you’rea nuisance or have a 50lb pit bull or lit up a vape… but because you stood in the aisle.
So given “we’re all stuck here in this hull for some number of hours” there’s certainly some lenience that ought to be afforded. As adults we can (mostly) choose when we act out. Some people (like the mother in the story) just turn on the waterworks and play the “woe is me” game. That doesn’t solve anything and is a passive aggressive failure to own the responsibility.
Children don’t have the knowledge to know when it’s ok to do what, IF they’re even old enough to understand… and lack the emotional control. That’s why we don’t let them drive motor vehicles, pilot aircraft, or do much more than write speeches for politicians.
I’m not saying give kids a free pass… the sound of a child screaming makes my neck muscles tighten. I’m just saying that if your sentence starts with “Well I’m in First Class, so…” you’re barking up the wrong entitlement tree.
Respectfully.
E
To open, it is only fair to state that my wife works for an airline and we fly free or huge discount for positive space.
That being said, my daughter has been flying since 1yo and has sat FC for close to a million miles. We travel a lot.
She has never had a problem because we are responsible parents that wouldn’t allow it. No kicking seats, no acting up, and even as a lap child, we had once or twice asked to be moved to the back row of the plane when we knew we would have an issue. She had ear issues when real young and although cleared for 1a,1c,1d, we moved to 37abc, as far away from everyone as we could manage.
Selling tix for kids up front is not usually an issue, parents of bad kids are, regardless of searing. My most recent flight I was more annoyed that the row behind me with a sweet young child that their parents apparently don’t know what headphones are for and had the kid playing games for 6hrs with the speakers full blast. I wear headphones so didn’t have an issue but my wife forgot to charge hers and opted to sleep but couldn’t because of a 6hr video game binge in the seat behind us.
Common courtesy is not so common anymore.
@Ehud Gavron wrote…
“Onboard an A/C there’s nowhere to go.”
When our first child was a just under a year old he became unconsolable on a flight in F from London to the US. My wife swept him up took him to the bathroom and although it took 20 minutes he calmed down. I couldn’t hear him and I don’t think anyone else could either.
@sTEVE
That’s when flight attendants were still cleaning the lavatories. Now, they take the high road of safety-managers and don’t do that anymore. So the 20min stucked in a dirty and pissy lavatory is a no-go for the non-walmart crowds.
In almost EVERY circumstance that I’ve seen adults in premium cabins get upset with children, they have themselves looked like they ‘didn’t belong’ in the cabin either. First time upgraders can be just as annoying. Trust!
Considering how little space there is in economy to feed, play games, etc., I fully plan on paying for first class seats when we need to fly with our baby. It’s just not realistic to avoid flying until kids are old enough to exercise more self-control. Air pressure changes hurt a lot, and the instinct for kids when they hurt is to cry. I’ve been on plenty of transpacs where babies cried literally the entire 30 minute descent. Honestly, my level of sympathy depends on what the parents are doing; obviously, when the kid is crying despite efforts to soothe, I have nothing but sympathy. When parents are ignoring a crying or misbehaving kid, this is clearly a different story.
I raised two wonderful children and realize parenting is hard work. I don’t understand the lack of empathy some people have when small children don’t know how to relieve pressure in their ears and cry on planes or get fussy.
I remember being in first class between the fat guy and the crying baby. The stewardess just smiled and gave me two bourbons and headphones
I flew with my son, often. He happened to be a very easy baby. But as soon as I walked on a plane, strangers glared at us, as if I’d just brought a bomb on board. I appreciated the people who smiled, knowing that parenting is hard and travel can be a nightmare. Once, I was seated next to a woman with a baby. She had her hands full and I offered to hold her 6 month old. He smiled, we chatted, mom put away her carry-on and looked relieved. Baby was quiet and fine. I had to wonder why I was the only person to offer to help. Seriously. Babies exist. Parents need help. If a parent can afford that first-class seat, boom. You have a baby in premium seats. Personally, I find too many people think way too much of themselves in First or Business. They are rude to each other and rude to the flight attendants. Babies, for all of their needs, are never rude. They are just little.
My 7 year old just surpassed 1M miles, after flying in business back and forth to Europe and in the US her entire life. Our money is green.
Gary you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas here…
hey entitled white guys, get over it…first class is for anyone who buys a ticket…my kids were perfectly fine, yes occasionally made some noise but that’s life. Get over it and put your headphones on if bothers you that much. Now I concur if you have kids running around, banging seats, etc that they need to be disciplined. No different than the guy that over indulgences and asks me for my number or insists on looking down my shirt.
@ginger how, exactly, do you know that everyone commenting in a way that you don’t like is a white guy? Clairvoyance?
If you want to make a serious point, fine. Go for it. All power to you and I’d love to hear it and discuss it. But once you start typing phrases like “hey entitled white guys”, you come over as someone whose opinion I couldn’t say I respected, even I was offered a bucket load of cash to say that I did.