A father walked his very young son, three or four years old, to the middle seat between two strangers, told him “You’ll be fine, see you in a bit,” and went to his own seat somewhere else on the plane.
- There was no request to seat swap to keep them together and new discussion with crew.
- The child cried and asked why he couldn’t sit with dad
- The adjacent passenger ended up doing the parenting: buckling him in, improvising activities with paper and a pencil, and later getting wipes out after the kid chose a chocolate snack and smeared it everywhere.
When they landed, the father returned and offered no thanks. Here’s the report:
@kelliklement8 still thinking about this! #story #flight #story #fyp #fypシ #fypage ♬ original sound – Kelli Klement
It seems to me that this was the boy’s pre-assigned seat. The father wasn’t dropping him in an empty middle. But it also seems like there wasn’t any effort to keep the family together – and that this was by the dad’s design. Usually we hear about families split up by the airline. Here the dad just didn’t want to deal?
Normally, most airlines help arrange families together in advance but this isn’t always possible. At a minimum there’d be an attempt at the gate and even onboard. The parent would ask to switch with another passenger. None of that seems to have happened here.
Boy, the seatmate was a saint. There’s no obligation to entertain or feed a stranger’s child. I usually don’t even want to interact with them without a parent’s ok. There’s too much liability!
We don’t know what airline, route, or date this was. There are several public accounts – TikTok and secondary write-ups – though none provide flight specifics.
I wonder, though, is (1) abandoning your kid to strangers or (2) just flat out poor parenting of your kids the worse option?
This @united flight was giving @SpiritAirlines Flight attendants were rude, a fight broke out, and surely no one bothered to clean my tray. Only Delta and JetBlue to St. Martin ever again! #unitedairlines #airlinenightmares pic.twitter.com/i1cD3rAFj1
— Anita Dolce Vita (@DolceFemmeAnita) December 21, 2023
Either way we’ve seen this play before: a father left his 5-year old son in coach while he flew business class from Chicago to Beijing. The passenger seated next to this child took revenue on the dad: by teaching him naughty phrases.
(HT: Paul H)
Wow. As a parent myself, would never, ever consider something this stupid. It’s not poor parenting, it’s child abandonment, plain and simple. If this is indeed true, seems like authorities should be charging the ‘parent’ and seems like the kid is better off in the custody of the local child protective services (which I realize is almost never a good solution, but probably the best one here).
Also, I’d look to start questioning the crew to figure out why they did nothing. Seems like even without a request to keep dad/kid together, it wouldn’t be hard to see what was going on, even if they missed the initial dad/kid interaction. Crew should be reprimanded if it seems they knew what was going on and did nothing.
I can hear the dad and his attorney now in court claiming the mother is unfit.
Given how few people are willing to switch these days, the Dad probably saved himself some time.
In Canada, young children must be seated with their parents at no charge.
Parental responsibility- what a new concept.
Perhaps we need to require a test and a breeding license for cave men.
The parent was simply following the rules, sitting in his assigned seat.
@derek — This Thursday’s posts really are shaping up to be ‘malicious compliance’ day, isn’t it?
Reminds me of Bart Simpson on the plane… ‘Turn it back on! Turn it back on!”
Yeah, the kid would’ve been drop kicked back to dad in one minute on my flight
A good argument against allowing children under 16 on aircraft.
How do we know this wasn’t a non- rev scenario? I’ve been in this position and don’t like to impose on a paying passenger. Sometimes you have to take what is assigned and sit down.
Seriously if Airlines didn’t make it SO HARD to accommodate children with parents.
I get it. It is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Ask someone to switch with you so that you can be near your kid, and you’re the jerk. Have your kid and you just sit in your assigned seats without making a fuss…you’re still the jerk. Parents are just operating within the system set up by the airlines. If you don’t want to sit next to someone else’s kid, you should be in favor of making it cheap and easy for parents to sit with their kids.
On the one hand, I get the strong (and with good cause) impetus against “leaving small kids unattended with strangers”.
On the other hand, this is a weird corner case – presuming the dad was a few rows forward (and this was a narrow-body with no weird de-boarding process), there was nowhere for Junior to vanish off to without Dad noticing, so the worst possibilities aren’t there…and as others have said, the fact that the airline didn’t twig “three-year-old” in the reservation and try to “forcibly” seat them together (that is, overriding seat-selection restrictions/fees) is really on the airline. Trying to find someone willing to take a middle who didn’t book a middle for a swap is a losing battle, and the post doesn’t say if they were both stuck in middles (at which point you might literally be asking someone to give up a paid upgrade).
If you cannot be seated with your 3-4 year old, the answer would be to wait for another flight. It’s that simple.
I can’t see ANY airline forcing a small child to sit separately from at least one parent or guardian. The potential liability issue alone. This jerk would have been first one to go out and hire some ambulance chaser if that child had been exposed to something/somebody perverted in flight.
I don’t think we can make judgements without knowing everything about the circumstances. You don’t know for sure that he didn’t try to get the seats switched, and maybe he was so grumpy to not say Thank You because he was so frustrated with the airline.
Obviously if he did this on purpose then he was wrong, but it’s not for me to assume that this was his fault.
Makes one long for the times when no one was silly enough to travel with a child.