Families Flying with Small Children

We're in the middle of an era where airline travel is now a matter of dollars and cents and what they'll charge you for and what they won't. We're livid with the new ways they're trying to save money because their biggest methods involve charging us more, cutting off services and using practices that in most people's minds should be illegal. (That's right, I'm talking about "overbooking" and selling more tickets than there are seats on the plane as insurance against cancellations - which I'm sure makes sense to the airlines but it sounds like purely illegal activity in MY book.) Anyway, with all the rage regarding the possibility of being treated as nothing more than sacks of meat freight and paying tickets based on our weight - we seem to have overlooked an interesting trend that this blogger sees as a potentially good idea and a potentially bad one.

More airlines have stopped letting families with small children board before the general public, including Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.

There are, of course, two schools of thought regarding this course of action.

1) This is a great idea, because it's more efficient and those not travelling with small children that get seated faster.

The numbers don't lie. It's primarily an efficiency thing. So before you accuse any of the airlines of being anti-parent, anti-children, anti-family or anti-caring-about-those-travelling-with-small-children, please bear in mind that test after test proves that it's an inefficient way to board a plane. Just ask Delta, the leading airline in service experiments:

"If you're bringing on people who need assistance — younger kids — all at once, you potentially create a bottleneck on the front end, as opposed to randomly dispersing them based on where people are sitting in the aircraft," explained Delta spokesman Anthony Black. "The best process is to board the aircraft normally."

And doing so, he said, saves an average of 10 to 12 minutes over allowing families to preboard.

You know, it's hard to argue with 10 to 12 solid minutes of difference between a plane being ready for takeoff and a plane still stuck on the tarmac with flight attendants telling you to stow things completely under the seat in front of you.

Meanwhile, the parents in the family units travelling with small children generally need extra time to deal with their extra baggage (both the luggage and the human varieties) and the fact that they have limited hands/arms with which to deal with it all. But does it make more sense to let them take that extra time BEFORE allowing the rest of the passengers to have THEIR time dealing with baggage and settling in? Or should they be stuck managing things when the rest of the passengers are - taking the same amount of extra time, but at the SAME time as other people?

Normally, I'd say good riddance to the families-board-first initiative - but I'm also aware of the lesser-talked-about second school of thought regarding this issue.

2) This is a horrible idea, because children could wind up ANYWHERE.

Speaking as a non-travelling-with-small-children passenger, there's one benefit I've found to having to wait those extra minutes while the breeders on my flight get to take their sweet time buckling in Junior. That benefit is that when it's time for ME to board, I have a visual of all potential child-endangered seating. If you don't want a brat kicking your chair or be in a onw-row vicinity of a screaming baby - the best strategy is to let them on first and then pick the spot that's clear of their threats. I work to identify all snot-nosed kiddies in those 30 seconds of travelling down the claustrophobic aisleway so I can pick a window seat as close to the front but as far as possible from the broodlings.

Without this system - if you let all general passengers start boarding in one group - my seat's perimeter could be invaded by Children of the Corn in a later boarding group! While no parent is really going to raise an eyebrow to someone passing up their row to find other available seating, getting up to get the hell out of there once they have arrived is probably going to be a confrontational issue. Especially if it's interrupting their several-minute procedure of getting settled in. Which means you're either stuck being a jerk or stuck with the little ones the entire flight.

Now please don't think of me as some ogre who's against children and thinks that they're all a bunch of snot-nosed poopy-pantsed screaming bundles of pure evil and annoyance. I've personally had very few flights that have been affected by young people - and those that were involved babies with colic who frankly disturbed the ENTIRE plane, no matter where you were located. But then again, I've made it a point to take these proactive measures to ensure that I DON'T have a lot of flights being affected by your little ones.

Don't take it from me, though. Try asking AirFareWatchDog.com and their poll about how the flying public feel about those travelling with their little children. There was a news story about it as well, citing that regarding the question of "Should airlines have a section of the plane reserved for parents with babies and younger children?" 58% of pollsters responded that "Yes, they should have done this long ago." 27% said "Yes, but they never will and it'll never work." and the remaining 15% went with "No. This is a bad idea."

85% of people think that child-carrying clans should sit in a separate section of the plane, even though a third of them think it'll never happen. I frankly don't think it'll work, either, but that's from a logistics standpoint. I'm not thinking about the business situation of their "overbooking" and whether it's okay to fill up cancelled Family Zone seats with standby Adult Zone passengers - I'm just thinking about the fact that most people want to stow children away somewhere they can't be HEARD. You can't soundproof a section of an airplane. It'll prevent the kicking and reduce the risk of germ infestation and being nagged or stared at by the unsupervised toddlers you'll occasionally encounter. But it won't reduce the overall noise they generate in a variety of ways.

So here's my idea.

If you're an airline lucky enough to still have TICKETED SEATING, meaning you purchase a ticket and it's got your seat row and number on it - then to hell with those and their small children, because there's no reason to have them waste those 10 to 12 minutes. You know where you're sitting, as does everyone, and you board by groups from the rear of the plane to the front as it's the most efficient method, and that's that.

If you're an airline like so many nowadays with GROUP SEATING, meaning you purchase a ticket and it's got your boarding group on it - then for the sake of those who don't want to be around your little ones, we have to let you on first so we know where NOT to sit. We hate the thought of losing another ten minutes to standing around with an A-Group boarding pass while we wait for the endless stream of priority seating passengers to settle in, but at least we have a chance to save ourselves from being bothered DURING them flight - provided we spent the time and effort to get an A-Group boarding pass and show up early enough to have a pick of seating in the child-free zones.

So that's my idea for how to solve the problem. Of course, my opinion really doesn't matter, since I'm an extra-large sack of meat freight who'll be flying as little as possible to avoid being charged per-pound just to visit family.

Do you have ideas about this issue (other than calling me names or treating me like an ogre)? Leave a comment and join the debate!

And then Digg this article!

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Airplanes!

So even an agorophobic like me is aware of the current situation involving the FAA and their horrible safety inspection record that has led to airlines grounding planes indefinitely in order to be serviced and inspected - leading to hundreds of flights being cancelled every day for some airlines.

To be honest, it makes me glad that I'm not someone who flies very often.

I don't want this to be a "sucks to be you" rant, but I would like to give my opinion on the matter. Because I enjoy giving my opinion.

I'm pretty sure that this whole thing started an entire month ago when the Federal Aviation Agency found out that there were missed safety inspections at Southwest Airlines and ordered an audit of their maintenance records. This led to the discovery that dozens of Southwest airplanes hadn't been inspected for cracks in their fuselages. The result was a $10.2 million fine for the airline.

That's when the whistleblowers stepped forward. Safety inspectors for the FAA claimed that the FAA treats airlines more as "customers" rather than companies that need to be regulated and inspected. In fact, "the FAA's chief maintenance inspector at Southwest, Douglas T. Gawadzinski, knowingly allowed Southwest to keep planes flying that put passengers at risk, and that another inspector knew of the problem and did nothing.

Southwest is not the only carrier that has benefited from a "cozy" relationship with regulators, said Tom Brantley, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union that represents FAA inspectors.

In testimony prepared for the hearing, Brantley details maintenance and safety issues at United, Continental Airlines Inc., Northwest Airlines Corp., Hawaiian Airlines Inc. and elsewhere where the carriers were given great leeway by the FAA to correct problems that inspectors on the ground said merited more serious attention. Financial penalties for infractions suggested by inspectors against United and other carriers also were ignored or significantly reduced by the time they were assessed, he added."

From there on out, it's just been a back-and-forth between the FAA that is now being brought to light for NOT having inspected planes and the airlines and their airplanes that apparently NEED to be ACTUALLY inspected. This led to the grounding of dozens of airplanes in order to be inspected and given clean bills of health, which results in hundreds and hundreds of cancelled flights for these airlines.

The price of fuel is already skyrocketing to the point of airlines raising their rates and cramming a body into every possible seat - which means that cancelled flights have no way of transferring their passengers to other airlines' flights because they're already overbooked as it is. Airlines are declaring bankrupcy left and right because of the loss of revenue due to grounded planes, fines and a lack of customer satisfaction (not to mention some airlines giving vouchers and paying for hotels as an attempt to compensate).

So I guess what this all boils down to is:

Would you rather:

1) Expose the FAA for the corrupt agency that it has become, which means that airplanes will finally be inspected and maintained, but at the cost of higher prices with cancelled flights on less options of non-bankrupt airlines.

2) Go back to an "ignorance is bliss" lifestyle of less-outrageously expensive tickets on a number of airlines to travel on airplanes that "probably" are safe to fly, knowing that the last time a jumbo jet actually crashed was Nov. 12, 2001.

Don't look at me to advocate one or the other. I'm just saying that these are the two paths - and people didn't seem to be too troubled with option #2 until the bubble was burst on the blissful ignorance and we've automatically careened into option #1 with no hope of going back.

I'm just positing that both were viable options.

Frankly, I'm torn between the two. With all of the comedians chuckling it up over our insane airport security procedures, this is just icing on the cake for them since they'll search you three different ways to make sure you don't have any toothpaste containers over 3 ounces large but apparently won't bother to inspect the plane for cracks along the fuselage. But the point is, does it matter? Are you any more safe after they've finally searched the plane for cracks? Would those cracks have actually taken down your plane and it would have been blood on the hands of the FAA?

One would think that if this wonton disregard for inspection and regulation had gone on for so long - there would have been more evidence of it in airplane crashes and whatnot. Right? Wouldn't you have expected to see this eerie string of plane crashes that after long investigation showed that they were the result of something that should have been caught in an inspection, which would lead to the investigation into the FAA's inspection and then we'd be right back to where we are now - but it would have made a lot more sense.

Maybe I just have a weird way of thinking about these things. Maybe it's the fact that I fly at most two roundtrips per year and never internationally. Maybe it's just the stream of headlines...

ATA Airlines filed for bankruptcy.
SkyBus filed for bankruptcy.
Aloha Airlines filed for bankruptcy.
Frontier Airlines filed for bankruptcy.

Are we looking at the end of passenger aviation? If we do get to keep flying, will we be safe under the watchful eye of a federal agency that likes to look away? Wouldn't it be easier if we let them keep doing it but back in secrecy so that ticket prices could go down and flights could resume at the potential risk of a few plane crashes? What are your thoughts on the matter?

(The whistle gets blown)
(The flights are cancelled)


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