Hellobee Boards

Ugh. I'm so excited and also dreading my trip to the beach in June. I'm flying with just me and my 4 year old and 1 year old. It is 3 days after their birthdays that we leave, so the baby will be just barely 1 year old. I will have two boys, both of their carseats, and my carry on bag to lug around everywhere with me. On top of that, I have to worry about crap like this!

I've heard horror stories of people having bought tickets for their under two child so they can place them in their carseat on the plane (which is what I do). When the plane is oversold, they sometimes automatically pull the child's ticket (often without refund/compensation) and try to make the child a lap infant. The whole point of having the carseat on the plane is safety of the child and not to damage the carseat from having it checked and handled by the baggage people.

It shouldn't be that hard. If you pay for a ticket, you should get a seat. If you follow the rules (ie- have an FAA approved car seat), you should be able to have your child ride in it. If you don't know the rule and accidentally mess up, you should be kindly informed of the rule and not be hit and almost have your child hit by a flight attendant. It is outrageous how poorly our commercial airline system in the US is run.

I would really like to know what happened before the video started rolling. Are airlines just being d-bags about how they enforce their rules?

Edit: @boopers: your link was helpful.

@Boopers: I can't access reddit at work--what does it say?

I have never had a horrible experience flying with my son, I don't understand what's going on lately in the world of air travel.

It shouldn't be this difficult, something isn't right, but I don't think we'll all agree on what problem we're trying to fix!

I've had one bed experience traveling with a kiddo, but it wasn't assault bad. I flew with my 3 month old solo from nyc-Dallas for a baby shower. I'd flown with my oldest several times, so I wasn't stressed flying with LO2 for the first time.

I booked my ticket and reserved an aisle seat, so I could easily get up to change diapers or whatever. But when I checked in, I suddenly had a middle seat. I asked at the check in gate what happened, they had no clue but said now the flight was full and I couldn't change. I was sat between two large business travelers who immediately put their tray tables down and put their laptops on, and I was nursing LO at the time and there was no space for her to lie sideways, plus it was just awkward with two dudes on either side of me. LO predictably had a big blowout and was a little fussy before, so businessman B kept sneering in our direction and kep dramatically sighing loudly when I asked him to let us out to go to the bathroom.

So, just awkward and sucky. I was mainly angry because I booked early specifically to get an aisle seat and then they switched the reservation. ugh.

If you're not allowed on planes with a stroller, I don't understand how she made it on there still holding it. With this incident and the United one, it seems like there's a disconnect with the boarding process. Both issues could have been avoided if they had been dealt with prior to getting on the plane. It's not like it's easy to hide a stroller while you board, kind of seems like someone should have said something sooner...

I'm also annoyed that a lot of people are saying, "Well, she should have KNOWN you can't take strollers onto the plane, everyone knows that!" No, everyone does not know that. Not everyone flies all that often. Maybe she hadn't flown with kids before. Or maybe she just plain forgot. I used to forget to take my shoes off sometimes, even though I knew I was supposed to. Regardless, I'm irritated that our society seems to have this opinion that if you break a rule, you deserve whatever degree of punishment you get. I don't care what the story was, if it's true that the flight attendant grabbed the stroller and almost hit the child, that is NOT okay.

This is another where, similar to the United incident, things could have and should have been handled prior to boarding – as long as there was a gate agent checking in ticketed passengers (I know on some flights you self-service board) the situation could have been resolved before boarding when tensions are higher. Assuming there was a gate agent (since that’s the majority situation) why didn’t the gate agent tell her that strollers can’t be brought aboard and had her gate check it? Problem solved. If it was an FAA-approved stroller, then she could have said that. Problem solved. It’s unclear from the reddit account whether the FA explained why and where the stroller would go; if he didn’t that likely would have deescalated the situation considerably.

Two alternative view points:

http://judymccarver.com/2017/04/the-problem-thats-even-bigger-than-the-ual-debacle.html?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

As far as those saying stroller issue should have been handled at the gate or at the entrance of the plane when the mom first stepped on board -
The gate agent could have told the momto gate check the stroller at the bottom of the jet bridge. Mom could have said yes without any intention to do so.
Once she got to the plane where a flight attendant is standing and greeting passengers, there could have been a multitude of scenarios on how she got past the FA -
FA tells mom that the stroller won't fit and/or not allowed but mom insisted and went past anyway or, FA acquiesced and said ok fine, try it (knowing it won't fit) so it won't turn into an argument and the passenger can find out for themselves.

Literally on every single plane I've boarded, regardless of the plane and overhead size, there are ALWAYS passengers who insist that their extremely obviously oversized bags will fit. I witnessed one man saying once "I'll make it fit" as he dismissed the FA and continued his way to his first class seat. Ended up breaking the overhead bin door and delaying the flight. What do you do in that case, physically grab the man from walking down the aisle? People have to listen and comply.

This is getting so out of hand. Cell phone video vigilantes recording the situation in the aftermath and media blowing them out of proportion without any explanation of what had had happened prior to the recording. There's always a few bad apples but airline workers aren't asking or demanding passengers to do something crazy or illegal... all this rage and aggression is only making it harder for everyone to do their jobs and for the rest of the passengers to get to their destination safely on time. Obviously this latest situation has been making the rounds in aviation circles and allegedly many of the other passengers who witnessed the situation PRIOR to the recording have written letters in support of the FA to the airline.

I don't know if we can even trust these Reddit accounts--have their details been confirmed by mods (like a scanned ticket or itinerary....or are those things easily faked online?)?

@MrsSCB: I agree with you that if the flight attendant truly did hit her or was physically aggressive with her that's absolutely not OK regardless of the context. However, I take issue with your position that not everyone should be expected to know the rules. If you don't fly all the time, and you're going to be solo traveling with two kids and their gear, do some research before leaving to find out where your things need to go. Anyone who has even been on a plane before and has eyes knows that outside of something like the nano, a stroller won't fit anywhere on the plane. And when you check in, there are always those displays that say "if it fits here, it's a carry on" and it's quite obvious a stroller doesn't fit there. I just think lately our society has moved towards people taking so little personal responsibility. If you want to fly, doing a little research in advance seems a reasonable expectation. I fly with my kids all the time. I've flown solo with two of them (when they were 3 and 3 months) and I've never had an issue of any sort. I'm also a little cranky on this subject at the moment since we flew home from FL last week and there was a couple with three young boys (I would say the oldest was 5) they were all extremely ill behaved and the parents made no effort to control them. The parents sat in one row with their 18 month old who screamed the entire flight and they put their 5 and 3 year old alone in the row behind us and paid no attention to them. Their 3 year old was chewing gum and was climbing up my daughters seat from behind and dropped his gum out of his mouth onto her. Of course his parents had no clue any of this was happening so I had to parent him since no one else was doing so. Yes, flying with kids is hard, but if you can't handle it, don't do it.