News item: a woman complains a noisy child made her ears bleed during a recent flight, leading one columnist to observe that like it or not, you can’t put noisy children in the cargo hold.
“But there might be a solution” to the problem, observes Jane E. Fraser in the Sun-Herald.
She notes that nearly 60 per cent of travelers would like children to be contained to a "families only" section on flights, according to a survey by price-comparison site Skyscanner.
Not surprisingly, non-parents were the biggest supporters of the idea, with just 8 per cent of those surveyed arguing that families should be able to sit wherever they like and the majority saying they wanted to sit "as far away as possible from children.”
A quarter of non-parents surveyed went as far as saying they would prefer their flights to be completely child-free.
Yet nearly half of the parents surveyed rejected the idea, saying they didn’t want to sit next to "other people’s horrors.”
The "noise and ear" complaint went all the way to court, with Qantas reaching a confidential settlement with the passenger.
Some of the more imaginative suggestions put forward by Skyscanner users included the provision of a baby nursery, only allowing well-behaved children to fly and (presumably in jest) putting children "in the hold."
Skyscanner’s solution: charge a premium for an adults-only area.
By David Wilkening
