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Family gets rewarded for disrupting a flight?? (1 Viewer)

MarkHastings

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20...h_air_tantrums

Ok, maybe not rewarded initially (they were thrown off the plane), but::eek: WTF??? Disrupt a flight, cause everyone aggravation, and then get rewarded with free roundtrip tickets??? COME ON! They should have had a harsher punishment than that! That's total B.S.!!!!

Imagine if you were on that flight and found out how this family got rewarded?? :angry:

I'm sick of these companies feeling sorry for handing out punishment. What's next? If you get arrested, the cop is supposed to apologize to you for arresting you? Hey! Why not give thieves the merchandise they stole as a way of forgiveness!!! :rolleyes
 

David Williams

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The airline was 100% in the right here. They exercised their option to refuse service to an extremely disruptive family and refunded their tickets to them. That's where I would have stopped. It's ludicrous to reward that kind of behavior with free flights and I certainly can't believe the parents are upset at the airline. The blame rests with their child, not the flight attendant that spared the rest of the plane from listening to anymore of their raucous daughter.
 

Chris

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Exactly. Look, I can sympathize with parents of young children who cry in the middle of a flight when their ears pop. It's a new experience for them and they can freak out. I've been there. It's hard. At the same time, this child is not an infant. At 3 years old, they should be able to start to reason with them. And if they can't, they should be able to forcibly put the child in a seat and strap them down.

The instance in this case was that the child refused to sit in their seat and kept running around. I'm sorry, but at a certain point, it becomes: control your kid and strap them down or get off the plane.

Flying on a plane is not a "right". You are flying at the pleasure of the airline, and independent company. I have a sign in my store window that says "We reserve the right to refuse service" And the law backs me up on it.

The airline said: look, here's our rules, if you can't play along, you can't play at all. I say Kudos to the airline. Makes me more likely to fly with them in the future if I know they won't put up with such crap and that they respect passengers needs for flights to take off ontime. If a flight is really late, passengers can miss connections, have trip itineraries fall apart.. next week I'm flying to NY. I make a connection in DC with a 50 minute layover. That's a dead run. If I were pushed 15 minutes late in takeoff, it might mean I'd miss a connection. So, heck yes, give the family the boot rather then strand a plane full of passengers.
 

MarkHastings

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It's sad because you know that the airline gave these people free tickets because they were probably fearing possible bad press. I'm sure the parents would have done everything they could to make sure the airline looked like the 'bad guys" (remember the Tigger thread with the irate father? :rolleyes)

I wonder how many other people are now thinking about creating a disturbance to get free tickets? :frowning:
 

Stan

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This family should not have received anything, except maybe tickets on the next flight after their brat settled down.

I have two neices, now six and eight, who travel a lot. My sister raised them properly, taught them manners and how to behave in public. This type of behavior wouldn't have even happened.

Had this been a six month old baby, it's understandable. A three year old child, no way. Sounds like a whiny, bratty little kid who knows how to manipulate its parents.

Good job for the airline to boot them off the flight. Why should their situation affect 100 or more people. Rent a car and drive if you can't control your child.
 

Malcolm R

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What a sad, sad state our society has fallen into. Soon, no disruptive behavior will go unrewarded. :rolleyes
 

Bruce Hedtke

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So having a child means you are free from being responsible for it? "Hey, don't look at me...my kid is the one making all the noise". Having a child or children doesn't mean everyone else in public just has to deal with your bratty child.

Bruce
 

MarkHastings

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What does that have to do with anything? I am with Chris, there are certain times when you can say "Ok, the kid can't help it and the parents have done what they can do to resolve the situation", but just because you believe in "Kids will be Kids", that doesn't mean the rest of society has to put up with over-the-top behavior.

So Joe, I suppose you'd be ok if you were at an R Rated movie and someone brought a 3 month old and sat right behind you and had the kid scream in your ear all through the movie? I mean, you have kids and you know that babies DO cry! So I guess you'd be perfectly fine with that? I mean, the kid doesn't know any better, so it's perfectly acceptable, right?... ;)

Or, how about going out to a fine restaurant with your wife and having a child throw food in your face all night long. I know kids who LOVE to throw food and have food fights. So I guess you're ok with that too because "Kids will be kids".

Man, us non-parents must be REAL uptight/non-understanding jerks for not wanting to put up with that kind of behavior. :)
 

Dennis*G

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I have to side with the family. To have little kids, get kicked off the plane because the child is crying, and have no way to get home for another 24 hours due to some crappy airline rule. they had no luggage and I do not think the airline put them up anywhere.

Do they need free tickets somewhere? that was a little much, but to refund there previous flight and pay for any extra costs they endured, yes, that the airline should have done.

Maybe airlines need to make a couple rows in the back as cry rooms, so no one would have to go through that again.

I think this could have been resolved a lot better if they were able to take the next flight out (assuming th child was calmed down.) I think that rule of 24 hours no flight after being removed from a plane should have some exceptions...
 

MarkHastings

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Dennis, did you read the article? It wasn't because the kid was making noise, it was because the kid wouldn't sit down. The plane can't take off until everyone is fastened in their seatbelts. I don't think it's too much to ask a family to have their 3 year old buckled in their seat during take off.

If a parent can't comply with this simple request, then they don't deserve to be on the plane at that time and nor should the other passengers have to wait any extended amount of time for the parents to try and get the kid to sit down.

It sounds like everything was done to try and get the situation resolved and unfortunately had to resort to kicking them off the flight. Kudos to the airline. Sure it sucks for the parents, but it's no ones fault but their own if they can't do something about a 3 year old who can't sit still long enough for a plane to take off.

I mean, 15 MINUTES of trying to get the kid to sit still! They tried for 15 minutes and still couldn't control the kid? WTF?
 

Claudia P

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Refunding the cost of the tickets is hardly a reward for bad behaviour.

An airline ticket is a legal document - it is a contract between airline and passenger. The airline has a contractual obligation to supply the service paid for by the passenger; the passenger has a contractual obligation to abide by the airline's terms and conditions of carriage. The passengers clearly met their obligations - they had checked in and boarded the aircraft on time.

What transpired next is every travelling family's nightmare. Anyone who has parented a child knows that a squirming, kicking three old year old in the full throes of a tantrum is not an easy beast to deal with. Short of smothering it there is no quick fix. To have a tantrum occur in the confines of an aircraft preparing to depart must have been exceedingly stressful for the parents,passengers and crew.

How do you know the parents were NOT taking responsibility for their child? Is there another news report on this incident that says the parents stood by and let the child run wild? It certainly does not say that in the bulletin linked to this thread.

The airline made the decision to terminate its contractual obligations to this family in the interests of the majority of passengers on board. It offloaded the family and rightly refunded their money (this indicates there was not another flight available for them). The offer of the free tickets to anywhere on the network was an excellent move, imho.
 

MarkHastings

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No offense, but my ticket also is a contract that states a departure time. Sure that time can be changed, but it shouldn't be changed by the other passengers unwillingness to comply.

Who cares if the parents were doing all they could. That's still no excuse for holding a plane full of people up. And I'm sick and tired of this "You don't understand because you don't have kids" because that's bullshit.

I'm sick of having to be overly-understanding when it comes to kids. I totally understand how kids can be and no matter how great a parent you are, sometimes it's impossible to control them. That's fine, but whenever you run into instances like that, it is also unacceptable to expect everyone else (around you) to have to also deal with it.

That's the thing that pisses me off the most. I, nor anyone else, should have to deal with it.
 

Chris

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Just so it can be noted:

I have two children, including a severely autistic 7 year old who I tell you -could- be much more difficult to restrain then a normal 3 year old. But let me tell you, that's MY responsibility to make sure that I can handle my family to make sure that I don't push that off onto other people.

I have no right to discomfort a plane full of other people if I can't contain my kids. Some of those people may be flying home to BE with their kids. How would my putting on a situation that may cause them to miss connector flights good?

A 3 year old can be managed. It had to be strapped into a seat. Did the parents ever think about picking up the kid, forcing it into a seat, and tightening a belt down? At some point, actions speak as loud as words.

And before anyone says anything: forcibly putting on a seatbelt isn't even remotely in the same category as beating or abusing a child.


Actually, that's wrong. There is no binding agreement which requires an airline to carry you "no matter what", even if you have ticket and get their on time. An airline has a "Contract of Carriage" with the passenger.

Within each airlines Contract of Carriage, they specifically note that they have several force majeure events. In fact, in every airline I've ever ridden (AA/United/SWA/TWA/Northwest) any passenger may be removed if their prescence may result with a violation of Federal Regulations with regards to airline flight.

I was on a flight a year ago where a passenger was ejected for refusing to turn off his laptop as we were on the runway. He may have had a ticket. He may have been at the gate on time. But his actions meant that the airline would be in violation of federal regulations with regards to electronic equipment on a flight. So, they could eject him and they weren't required to do squat about his ticket.

Federal regulations specifically note that all passengers must be wearing the required safety measures. That's why all airlines, in the late seventies were required to have a means to KNOW if your belt was on or off, which was re-done in the early nineties.

The airline made a call. The passenger in question (the three year old girl) was clearly in violation of federal regulations in regards to her safety measures on that flight. Her family's measures were viewed by the airlines as not effective in meeting their requirements in a fashion that did not significantly delay flight. That's important, because passengers also agree, as part of Contract of Carriage, that they cannot be responsible for any delay of schedule and the airline will not delay schedules for any client at the client's penalty.

So, in that case, the airline was well within it's right to make the decision it made. Imagine the flight I was on. A 30+ year old man refuses to turn off a laptop. The flight risks getting delayed. Are you mad at the airline or the guy who refuses to follow federal regulations?
 

nolesrule

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I'm not saying I disagree with the airline for removing the family from the flight, but we have to keep in mind that a three year old is not a grown adult, and there can be times when even the most well-behaved child is difficult to control, even by their own parents.
 

David Williams

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Yes. I watched two separate stories on Headline News & Fox News that said that the flight attendant specifically asked the parents more than one time to strap their child in and the parents did nothing but try to coax their 'child' out from under the seats where she had crawled. The child was kicking and hitting her parents from under the seat. Even when the story is told from the parents POV it's still ridiculous!

"Gerry Kulesza, Elly's father and an EMT, said a flight attendant first asked if they had purchased a seat for their daughter, to which they said yes. Moments later, Gerry said he was approached again and told, "You need to get her in control and in her seat."

The Kulesza family asked if they could hold their daughter instead of putting her in her seat, but were told no. Shortly afterwards, the family was approached by an AirTran Airways flight attendant and asked to leave the plane.

Elly's mother, Julie Kulesza, was shocked when the flight attendant told her husband that they had to leave the plane. "They were talking to my husband. They said, 'So, you need to get off the plane now.' I looked up and I went, 'Are you serious?'""
(Source)

""The flight was already delayed 15 minutes and in fairness to the other 112 passengers on the plane, the crew made an operational decision to remove the family," AirTran spokeswoman Judy Graham-Weaver said.

"She was removed because "she was climbing under the seat and hitting the parents and wouldn't get in her seat" during boarding, Graham-Weaver said."
(Source)
 

Adam Lenhardt

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There were two parents. They are big while he is small. One should have held him down while the other buckled him in. Only deal with the tantrum after that has been accomplished.
 

drobbins

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Parents do have a responsibility to discipline their children and teach them to act in socially acceptable manors. As a parent of two, I have had to leave a restaurant only once due to an overly tired child who wouldn't stop crying. Got a to-go-bag.

I have seen it this thread and others where parents are criticized for not keeping their kids under control. The other side of the coin is - how discipline should be administered. When a child mis-behaves, he should be disciplined immediately, not when we get to the car. They do not make the connection with the time delay. When my children acted out in public, half the "looks" I got were "can't you teach your kids how to behave?". The other half is "He is just a kid, they all do that". I will tell you that for each person who criticizes a parent for not disciplining their kid, there is a person who will criticize the parent for disciplining the child. This day and age, I was afraid of spanking (not beating) my child in public. Someone might see it as child abuse. :frowning:
 

MarkHastings

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I know. This is (unfortunately) the reason why there are more and more unruly kids out there. Parents are afraid to discipline thier children for fear of being looked upon as 'abusers'. So now the rest of the world has to do deal obnoxious children because the parents are afraid to do anything about their behavior. Truly sad and VERY infuriating to those of us who don't have kids. :angry:

I'm sick and tired of having to deal with an obnoxious kid and watching the parent do nothing about it. Again, whether it's just lack of parental skills or fear of dealing what may be considered "too harsh" a punishment, but whatever it is, it ruins my (and everyone elses) time out in public and needs to be stopped somehow.

Although I do have to say that I'm not afriad to discipline a child (who isn't mine) ;). I was once in Kohl's and these kids were going around pushing all of those "Dancing Frog" toys where they had a dozen toy frogs dancing and singing some song. They had them all going and everytime one would stop, they'd push another. :angry: It was SO annoying and everyone in the store kept looking over like "WTF?" - The parents weren't doing a damn thing, so I went over and said to the kids (forecfully) "Would you mind knocking it off!!" ;)
 

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