No

by Arthur Gibson

Created on: March 25, 2008

Sure, let's put every child 13 and under in the tail end of the plane to keep them from seeing violent movie images. Remember if you do this, you're now putting every child between newborn and 13 in one section. Who's going to watch all these children, let alone change every dirty diaper, calm down frightened toddlers, and keep every child above age 3 from constantly wandering up and down the aisles? Not to mention handling temper tantrums, feeding babies, and constantly cleaning up messes. Maybe we can convince the airlines to hire 5 or 6, 16 - 18 year old teenagers to babysit the back section of each plane. At $3 or $4 per hour per child, that would be real cost efficient.

Just imagine the noise level of having all the children concentrated in one section of an airplane for 2 to 3 hours. I'm sure none of the passengers in the other sections of the aircraft would be disturbed. Mothers and fathers would be constantly running up and down the aisles checking on their young ones in the back of the plane. That might help those who are a few pounds overweight get their exercise during the flight. But, how would you like to be the passenger on the aisle who has parents constantly climbing over you for the entire flight? I'm sure by the time you landed at your destination, you'd feel real relaxed and ready to face your upcoming business meeting, traffic between the airport and your home, trying to get to your hotel, rent a car, or any other plans you had previously made.

Or can you imagine the flight attendants trying to care for all the children in the back? Are the airlines going to provide them with additional training as child care providers, or maybe give them extra pay for dealing strictly with children? Probably not, and how many flight attendants are going to volunteer to work the children's section of the plane? I would guess not many. Given a choice between working the sections of the flight with adults, most of whom who can expect to be reasonable, or children, I'm guessing most would choose the adults. At least with adults, you can expect to understand their wants and desires. Something that's not always the case with children of any age.

Are you really expecting the children to stay in their sears without causing any problems during a 3 hour flight? How many of you have taken a cross country drive with two children in the backseat of a car? Fun isn't it? Do you really think that you're not going to hear constant bickering between 3 - 7 children sitting in a row of seats? I can hear it not, he touched me, he's sitting on my seat and his, he took my toy, ad infinitum. By the end of the flight, you could probably put that plane out of service for at least a day. It would take at least that long just to clean up the spilled food and soft drinks, not to mention replacing the seats where a child had wet himself. That's going to be a fun job!

Are you only going to put child size seats in the back of the plane? That would allow the airlines to put more children onto a flight. Are you going to have an approved for children movie in the tail section of the plane? Oh, wait, I'm forgetting that you're going to have to have a wide variety of movies and tv programs back there because the 13 year old teenagers aren't going to be interested in a movie that keeps a 5 year old child's attention. So now you've got additional problems.

I realize that to many this article will seem to be over the top. And that's the way I meant it to be. Trying to insure that children aren't exposed to violent images on a screen in flight by putting them in a special section won't work. Because wherever you put the children, you're going to have to put their parents. The only possible solution, and its only a partial solution and probably not cost effective, would be to have individual screens on the back of each seat. Then have a choice of movies for every flight, giving the parents the ability to control what movie is shown on their child's individual seat. Oh, wait that won't work either, because the person in front of you might decide to recline in their seat and you'll lose your screen. So let's just ban in flight movies all together.

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