Passenger slams family after being told not to eat near their kid during flight – but people are divided
A PASSENGER has divided opinion after he was told by a family not to eat food near their kid during a flight.
The passenger said they were flying from New York to LA for work, and was sitting next to a family and a young child.
He explained that he was having problems with his diabetes so had to eat some food – which is where the problem began.
He wrote on Reddit: “I immediately began receiving dirty looks from the parents and the mother said ‘can you not do that? Our son.’
“So I put my food away and figured I’d wait until the flight attendant came around so I could buy food from her and eat at an acceptable time just to show some respect for their wishes.”
However, after asking crew for a Coke and snacks, the dad of the family told the crew the whole row didn’t want anything, forcing the flight attendant to leave.
He continued: “I go up to press the call light so I can get my food and my drink because I actually need it and the father says ‘our son has Prader-Willi, we’d prefer it if you didn’t eat because it causes tantrums when he doesn’t know he can’t eat and he’s always hungry’.
“I’m close to a tantrum myself at this point and so I look him in the eye and say ‘I do not care, fly private if you want to control your surroundings’.”
He said he then ate his snacks before the mum said she needed to “educate him”, to which he snapped and told her he “wouldn’t endanger himself” for the sake of her son.
However, he asked if he was in the wrong after his friend said he should have been more understanding of their son’s condition.
Some people agreed – one person wrote on Reddit: “A kid with Prader-Willi Syndrome has a real organic, very hard-to-control drive to eat food, it’s a seriously difficult disease to deal with.”
Someone else wrote: “I feel for the family because I’m sure it’s a very difficult condition to manage and causes a great deal of stress.”
A third wrote: “Three adults and you couldn’t have a civil conversation about the respective medical issues and ask the flight attendant for a seat switch?”
Despite this, most people were on his side, saying it wasn’t his problem to deal with.
One person said: “Even if you didn’t have diabetes. People don’t get to come into public space and dictate anyone else’s acceptable behaviour.”
Someone else agreed: “You were absolutely correct. They had no right to refuse your food and yell at you for eating, this is a public conveyance and they do not own the plane.”
Many also said not eating with diabetes was more dangerous: “My husband has Type 1 Diabetes and there’s no way in hell he’d have waited like OP did. It can be dangerous, life-threateningly so.”
Here’s how to deal with rude kids on a flight kicking your seat.
And an airline has revealed how to deal with screaming kids on the plane.