Airline passengers don’t like kids on flights, concludes USA Today.
That was apparent after a recent report that the family was thrown off the plane when their 3-year-old girl threw a temper tantrum and refused to take her seat before takeoff.
“What happened next boggles the mind,” writes Dan Schlossberg of ConsumerAffairs.com.
The incident touched off a nationwide discussion on the subject, with the topic dominating the news from the Web to network TV. But there wasn’t much debate.
“AirTran got 14,000 calls and emails endorsing their action,” Schlossberg writes. “Fourteen-thousand! If George W. Bush had won Florida by that many votes seven years ago, Al Gore supporters could stop singing Hail to the Thief,” he adds.
“Political insinuations aside, Mr Shlossberg’s point is that fliers really, really don’t seem to like kids on flights. In fact, many seem downright hostile to the idea of sharing their cabin space with someone else’s children,” said USA Today.
“The bottom line is that most airline passengers pack little patience for little kids,” Schlossberg writes.”
Syndicated columnist Eileen Ogintz, whose Taking the Kids column has a website of the same name, said she received emails from passengers who wanted to ban all children under age 5, Schlossberg says.
He also talked to Worcester Telegram writer Dianne Williamson, who broke the story. She also heard from a lot of readers. She concludes:
“I guess people really don’t like kids on planes.”
Report by David Wilkening
