[Jan Fisher]

There is a growing push for a ‘babies only’ section on planes.

I was one of those parents of a badly behaved baby once. My daughter screamed and threw her head back into my face for the whole trip between Sydney and Melbourne and only fell asleep as we landed. Thank god it was only an hour. I wept when we got home it was so stressful.

We went to New Zealand 10 days later and she was a dream. The flight attendants handed her around for cuddles and tucked her up in their own sleep area for a nap. It was like night and day.

That’s just one reason why I don’t agree with making ‘kid-only’ zones. Babies don’t mean to be badly behaved, and really out of all the flights I’ve been on, that’s the only time it’s ever concerned me.

By far and away the worst flight I have been on was due to drunken adults. A group of footy players were on their end-of-season trip and had been drinking in the airport for hours.
By the time they had got on the flight they were well and truly stewed.

Their rowdy behaviour quickly turned dangerous as they started throwing half-empty cans around the cabin and swearing at the attendants. Frankly I was surprised there were no police waiting for them when we landed.

This was long before phone cameras were popular, but they would have easily gone viral in this day and age.

At the same time, I don’t want a ban on drinking on planes due to one bad experience.

What do you think, should families with young children be in their own area? Should drinking be banned on flights?

[KSS]

I would by far prefer people traveling with babies and young children be placed in a specified section and even more so on long-distance flights.

Before all parents and grandparents get on their high horses, consider this: babies and young children have special needs that adults and older kids do not have. Likewise, the parents or chaperones of the younger children also have different needs to the independent passengers on the same flight. How much easier would it be for the flight crew to be able to cater to all these kids and their parents if they were all together in one area? The kids would likely entertain each other thus relieving the inevitable boredom that sets in shortly after takeoff. The feeding needs of the kids can be better catered when they are all together. The parents located next to others in the same position will not have to put up with the eye-rolling, heavy sighs and side-eyes of other passengers. It would also mean that another responsible adult can watch the kids when the parent wants a bathroom visit or even just a stretch of the legs without a child in tow for 5 minutes. And if or rather when a particular child screams all the way between Sydney and London, the other nearby parents can offer their support.

We used to corral smokers to one area in the past, I see no reason not to do the same for parents and young kids. Oh and one last thing, it would mean that another child or parent would be the recipient of the hours of seat-kicking by someone else’s little treasure and would happily accept it as the price they have to pay for travelling with kids.

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