What flight attendants are really thinking when you bring your kids on a flight
YOU may have recently seen a news story about a man who was absolutely furious when cabin crew asked his pregnant wife to pick up crumbs off the floor of the plane.
I admit, on the face of it, it sounds like the passenger had every right to be angry, but dig just a little bit deeper into the story and you realise that there’s much more to it.
In this, my latest blog for Sun Online Travel, I’ll explain how entitled behaviour like this makes life not only more difficult for us, but can sometimes cause problems for other passengers.
I’ll also explain how it’s mainly parents that do this, the other incredibly frustrating things that parents do on board and why we wish we could enforce no kid rules for some flights.
I’ll start by saying I’ve got nothing against parents or children, but there’s something that happens when they get on board our planes that makes them forget about their responsibilities.
In the story I was talking about, the man made a big deal of the fact his wife was pregnant when she was asked to pick popcorn up off the floor.
However, she was 22 weeks pregnant, which is far from the brink of giving birth. She would still have been more than able to pick up a few crumbs off the floor, without it being too much of a problem.
Several mothers responded to the man’s original complaint saying at that stage she’d have been absolutely fine to do a little bit of housekeeping.
Incidentally, the crumbs were put there by her children, aged two and five, something she could well have expected to have to deal with, which brings me to my main point.
You’d clean up after your kids, or at least get them to clean up after themselves, if they’d thrown food around in your home, or anywhere else – so why is it different on a plane?
People confuse flight attendants with servants or cleaners, rather than the people keeping them safe on board the plane.
Yes, we do have to do some tidying at the end of the flight, but that doesn’t give parents licence to let their kids chuck food everywhere and do nothing about it – what kind of an example is that setting?
It’s the most selfish and entitled behaviour I’ve seen from any passenger – and it’s not a good look for anyone.
Sadly, this isn’t an isolated incident either. I remember not that long ago, a mother putting her and her kids’ food trays on the floor in the aisle instead of keeping them on their tables like everyone else.
When I went round to collect the trays after the meal service, her daughter tried to pick them up off the floor to help me, but her mum stepped in and told her not to bother because it’s our job.
It’s an awful attitude and one we rarely get from passengers who aren’t there with their kids, it’s baffling.
It’s not the only thing that parents do that they shouldn’t either – some drink a lot even when they’re with young kids, which they’d probably never do at home.
Others will literally ask us to keep an eye on their kids while they have a nap. Which is absolutely in no way part of our job.
I know you might be struggling as parents, but it’s really not up to us to specifically look after your children, so just be courteous and act as you would anywhere else. It’s really not hard.
We’re looking after everyone on board the plane, not just your kids, so remember that when you ask us to sit and play games with them while you have a snooze.
I, and plenty of other flight attendants, would love the option of flights without kids, where parents aren’t thinking about how they can pass their responsibilities on to us for the duration of the trip.
It would honestly make our lives much simpler and wouldn’t pass problems on to other passengers.
That happens when we’re spending too much time cleaning up crisps that have been trodden into the carpets, chocolate that has been smeared onto a seat or any number of other messes left behind.
That can result in us boarding the plane later than expected, missing our very small departure slot and having to wait for another opportunity to take off.
It seems like such a small gesture, but not cleaning up after your kids could be the difference between someone making or missing a connecting flight further down the line.
So, while we fully understand that you want to bring your kids with you when you go on holiday, you have to meet us in the middle and not just forget how to function as a member of society.
Otherwise your kids will grow up to be spoilt and entitled too. Or at the very least embarrassed by their parents’ behaviour.
Meanwhile, another passenger was slammed online for leaving a horrible sticky mess in a plane’s seat pocket.
And this man was seen throwing dirty wet wipes on the floor of the plane.