No

by Megan Stoddard

Created on: August 30, 2010

Requiring airline passengers with children to sit in a separate section would be a logistical nightmare and would solve no problems. It is far better to keep the current system.

As it is, children may sit in any section of the airplane (except emergency exit rows), and they, and everyone near them, usually handle the trip as well as possible. For adults who do not wish to sit next to children, reasonable accommodations are often made. While most frequent fliers can remember at least one flight where the peace was disturbed by a crying baby or a rambunctious child, those disturbances are few and far between. The majority of flights have no such problems, even if there are children on the plane.

If airlines did create separate sections for passengers with children, it would become a logistical nightmare. Some flights would have no children on them at all, while others would have multiple families with children. During summer and the Christmas season, when many families travel together, the numbers would rise. How would the airline know how many seats to set aside for passengers with children?

Airlines with a separate section for passengers with children could handle this one of two ways. They could designate a “family” section just for passengers with children, no exceptions. If there were no children on a flight, or not enough passengers with children to fill that section, seats would remain empty. Or the airlines could allow passengers without children to sit in the family section once they knew for certain that those seats would not be filled by children and their accompanying adults. Neither option would work very well.

The last thing airlines want is empty seats on their flights. Each empty seat is a loss of money. Nowadays, all the airlines are strapped for cash. Travelers feel the pinch in the form of increased fares, decreased amenities, fewer available flights, and fees for what used to be free (the widely reviled baggage fee is a prime example). Even with higher prices for the consumers, airlines operate on a budget close to the wire. They cannot afford to deliberately leave seats empty.

Requiring passengers with children to sit in a separate section could also result in empty seats for another reason, and one that would create frustration and ill will on the consumers’ part. Suppose a family with children wishes to fly on vacation during the peak of summer. They try to make reservations on a flight and find that the family section is full. So are most, perhaps even all, of the other flights they try to book. There may be empty seats in the rest of the plane, but this family cannot take them because their party includes children. Meanwhile, the seats reserved for adults remain unsold.

A similar logistical nightmare could occur if airlines allowed passengers without children to sit in the family section if there weren’t enough fliers with children. While few people who wish to travel with children book airline tickets at the last minute, it can happen, especially if there is a family emergency that requires travel. And it is very common, especially during peak travel seasons, for people to be forced to take a different flight than they had originally booked because their original flight is cancelled or overbooked.

So what happens to a family who arrives at the airport to find that their flight is cancelled, and no other flight leaving at a reasonable time can accommodate them because their family section is full - and full with adults traveling without children, because the airline sold them those seats assuming there would not be enough children on the flight to fill them?

Under the current system, it would be much easier for this family to get on their way with only a slight delay. All that would matter would be that there is space on the plane, and space that allows the parents to sit with their children, not which part of the plane that space is in. Under the proposed system, this family would have an interminable wait, and perhaps even have to cancel their vacation altogether. No one would be happy - not the stranded family, and not the airline, which loses their business and their goodwill.

Not only that, allowing adults without children to sit in the family section if there are not enough children on the plane would defeat the purpose of having a family section in the first place. It would not really be a separate section for passengers with children.

This brings us to another point: if a child does cause a major disturbance on a plane, it affects everyone, not only the people sitting near that child. An airplane’s cabin is a small space. If a baby is crying or a child is throwing a tantrum, everyone can hear it, even if they are sitting many rows away, sometimes even if they are separated from the child by a curtain. Adults not sitting in the children’s section would not necessarily be spared.

Some adults have strong feelings against sitting near children on an airplane. They fear that the child will cause a disturbance, or perhaps they simply do not like children. Airlines already have a system in place that accommodates that: any passenger may ask to be reseated for any reason, and the flight attendants will do their best to oblige. Nearly always, the passenger wishing to be reseated gets his or her wish. If you find yourself seated near a child and do not want to be, that qualifies. You do not even necessarily have to state the reason.

Requiring airline passengers with children to sit in a separate section would create logistical nightmares, decrease revenue for the airlines, generate consumer frustration and ill will, and would be completely unnecessary. Though the current system may seem somewhat inconvenient to adults who do not wish to sit near children when they fly, it is the most just. Part of being an adult is recognizing that we do not always get everything we want, that we can handle temporary inconveniences, and that we have no right to inconvenience others for the sake of slightly increasing our own comfort.

Not only that, allowing children to sit in any section of the plane has caused no major problems so far. An occasional flight may be disturbed by a crying baby or a rambunctious child. But that is simply part of life. On a plane, as in the rest of the world, babies and children exist. Adults must live with that even if they do not like babies and children. If an adult is seated near a child on a plane and does not wish to be, he or she has every right to request reseating. That is a much simpler solution than requiring passengers with children to sit in a separate section.

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