A plane rant.

We arrived home this afternoon from a great four days in Phuket, and all of us are tanned and tired. Some of us more tired than others owing to food poisoning, general fatigue and in the case of Zoe, a pre-existing cold that was worsened by an early morning flight on Saturday. Cold air does her respiratory system no good. Anyway, before I do a recap of our holiday, I wanted to write this rant about a couple of parents we encountered on the plane.

Parents #1
This expatriate couple had an infant with them who looked to be about two months old. They carried a Maxi-Cosi Cabrio rear-facing car seat on board the plane, installed it in a seat and buckled the baby in. The flight stewardess, conducting her pre-flight checks on passengers, noted two things – one, that the car seat did not have a approval sticker on it and two, that the couple had not even paid for a seat for their baby. She informed the couple that they would have to pay for the seat if they wanted to use the car seat in-flight, and also that she would check the regulations. If the car seat was found not to have been approved for in-flight use, they would have to store it in the cargo hold and the parents would have to carry the baby in-arms for the duration of the flight (about 1.5 hours).

Said stewardess left to check the car seat make and model against the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore’s list of approved seats. She returned to tell the parents that their particular seat was not approved and therefore they could not use it. I couldn’t really hear the conversation that ensued, but the parents were clearly insisting that they be allowed to use it. Only after the stewardess firmly told them that the airline would not be held responsible for anything that happened to the baby while it was in the seat, and that they could verify what she had said with the CAAS on ground did they grudgingly unstrap the baby and hand over the seat. End of story.

Parents #2
This set of parents was seated in the row directly in front of mine and the kids. They irked me no end. They had a four-year old girl whom they obviously did not exercise any authority over. The minute they had stowed their luggage and sat down, their daughter began to lean over the back of the seat and leer at Zoe, who had her DS in hand and a stuffed elephant. She tried to reach out and take Zoe’s stuff, which made Z anxious. I would have stepped in if she had actually grabbed the DS or elephant, but then the announcement was made for everyone to fasten their seatbelts, which got rid of the hovering problem, but resulted in more drama.

The girl decided that she absolutely could not and would not be restrained by the seat belt, so her parents gave in to her and let her sit on her mother’s lap. Of course, the stewardesses noticed and instructed the parents to buckle their daughter in as the plane was about to take off. The mother asked for an infant belt, which the stewardess declined to provide because it will only fit children aged 2 and below, so the mother reluctantly strapped her daughter into the seat and she screamed the whole 20 minutes it took for the plane to take off and achieve its cruising level where the seat belt sign was turned off.

The girl was pooped after her screaming session and the rest of the flight passed uneventfully…until it was time to descend for landing. Once again, the stewardess had to request that the parents prop the girl upright as she had been sleeping across her seat and her mother’s lap, so that she would not roll off upon landing. This they could not do successfully, so the girl woke up screaming and climbed onto her mother’s lap. Again the mother asked to try the infant belt, so the stewardess agreed and handed one over, which of course proved to be too small. The stewardess then instructed the parents to strap the child in (we were making the approach for landing at this point), warned them that there was a possibility that the girl would be thrown forward and then backwards, injuring both herself and her mother if the landing was hard, watched as they buckled the still-yelling girl in, then walked off to belt up in her own seat. The minute she walked off, the mother unbuckled the girl, put her on her lap, braced one hand on the seat in front of her, and prepared for landing.

I watched mother and daughter as the plane landed, distracted only by the sound of the father’s ringing handphone, hoping that it would be a smooth landing and the child would be uninjured. Thankfully, the pilot made an excellent landing and nothing happened. After that, I couldn’t help making disparaging remarks right in front of the parents as we prepared to disembark. I half wish the father had picked a fight with me – I knew he had understood every word of what I said – just so that I could give him a piece of my mind to his face.

It’s parents like this who should have their tubes tied. Seriously.

February 16, 2010

Posted in Travels and tagged flight safety, parenting.