Child-free flight zones: what do you think?

I think some of our fellow passengers recently might have preferred it. While the two DSs were well behaved on the flight itself, on the short bus trip to terminal DS1 kept shouting 'Wheee CRASH' and the more I tried to shush him the more hilarious he thought it was. I felt I should've reassured the other passengers he wasn't know for his powers of prophsesy .

zzzzzzz I'm completely with you on this. What is wrong with the people on here???

Children are part of the human race!They should be allowed to exist even if sometimes it is rather inconvenient for the rest of you!!

No - I don't think it's a good idea to separate out families and 'normal' people onto different flights. As others have said, what happens if you are sitting next to an obnoxious ADULT with bad breath and a big bottom ie me!! HA HA, you'd just have to get on with it.

Rant over

I don't think this goes far enough, what about on trains and busses? You could have a special carriage for children on trains and the underground and a section on busses too. Oooh, and in all public places, maybe a special zone like the ones that smokers are permitted to smoke in?

How dare children be children?

Not a particularly constructive or adult comment but:
having heard Peter Yorke on PM - I really hope my travel sick 2 year old and I sit next to him on a flight in the near future...

Somehow I doubt anyone has children because they are worried that there will be a lack of humans to populate the planet if they do not.

OK, I do see your point Fillyjonk (although I maintain that for many people having children has indeed become a lifestyle choice akin to owning a particularly desirable designer pet, which is probably part of the problem we're facing here). What I object to is the attitude of a sizeable minority of parents, who seem to think that not only is having children 'the natural way of things', but also that all of the noise, mess and disruption that often comes with them is also 'natural', and must be endured without complaint by everyone else. Again, it's the parents, not the children, who are in the wrong here.

In theory I totally agree with the argument that ideally children and adults should remain together so that the children can learn appropriate behaviour. Sadly, though, this often doesn't prove to be the case in practice - in my experience of flying, all some children are learning that it's completely acceptable to kick someone's seat from behind for the entire duration of a transatlantic flight, because their parents don't do anything about it.

Yes, our society does tend to view children as 'other' in many respects, which is obviously unhealthy, but I'd argue that equally unhealthy is the similarly prevalent tendency to fetishise childhood to the point that some parents view their children as infallible.

8pm I'm restaurants great with me. Child free planes its sad, society really does not like children very much, but they will one day be paying taxes and may become nicer adults if they are brought up to behave well in certain situations. Separate them and once they are able to go on the child free flights will they be able to behave?

I agree with you on the behaviour (of the adults!) thing TenthMuse, but disagree on having kids being a lifestyle choice. It's a bit more than that, if everyone made the choice NOT to have children, we'd die out in about 100 years. And it has only been a choice at all in the last 30 or so years, and for some people it still isn't.

If I were child-free I'd probably be gleeful. Come to think of it, when DC are adults I'd probably pay extra to sit in kid-free zone, too. So I am probably in the mild approval camp, too.

At the risk of sounding like a total grump, I think it's a great idea. I don't have kids (yet), but I've lost count of the number of times my partner and I have had to deal with (and in several cases act as babysitter to) other people's children during flights while the parents remain oblivious of/in denial about their children's behaviour. I don't blame the children at all; I realise that all children make noise. But I do blame those obnoxious/overly indulgent parents who think it's fine for their child to inflict continuous noise on the public during a ten-hour flight.

Slightly different context, but we recently travelled back from Paris in the so-called 'Quiet Carriage' of the Eurostar - specifically chosen as my partner had work to do for a meeting the next day. Suffice to say he got nothing done because Eurostar in their wisdom had seated a couple with a six month-old baby directly in front of us, which proceeded to scream its way from Paris to London, before promptly regurgitating its dinner through the gap between our seats. The parents made no effort whatsoever to calm or entertain the baby, but rather spent the journey joking about how they'd quite like to abandon it in one of the luggage racks. It wasn't even the crying itself that I objected to, but the complete lack of apology or even acknowledgement of the noise.

Sorry, but children are a lifestyle choice; they're hardly compulsory, and many people choose not to or are unable to have them. Those who do choose to have them need to take full responsibility for them. I'm by no means anti-child (I'm a teacher with an MA in a child-related field) and in most contexts I'm completely against the 'othering' of children. However, I think that flying is a special case; it's completely different from a short hop on a bus or a meal in a restaurant, as you're effectively captive for the duration of the journey and can't simply move if the noise or disruption becomes unbearable. I wouldn't support totally child-free flights, but a (properly enforced!) Quiet Zone sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Ewww, no! I would have to sit with all the other families with children, rather than them being spread about the plane.

My DC are obviously impeccably behaved, and I would want to have to suffer other peoples badly behaved children.

They already do this, I have often flown and they tend to put all the families together at the back !

No" news" as such, imo

I will happily sit in a zone for intolerant people, and make sure that my headphones are quiet enough that you can't hear any noise leaking from them, and refrain from conversing in above a whisper, as long as everyone near me does too.

No. Because those who already need to be asked to contain their feral children will just be worse because they will get all "but this is a family flight" when their child is being actively obnoxious.

As a parent, I of course want to book any flight I want with my children and will take great care that they bother everyone else as little as possible.

If travelling without my own children, I would prefer to sit next to a sweet, small 6 year old with a colouring book than a huge man with his knees wide apart who is trying to make banal conversation.

I am 100% in favour of this. I would love for there to be occasional child-free/adult-oriented options for most things - for example, train carriages, zoo talks, film screenings etc - and I would be happy to pay more for the option of using them. I really resent the fact that most daytime leisure facilities/activities that don't involve alcohol or extreme sports are so child-friendly that they become adult-unfriendly. The same applies to necessary travel - I hate flying at the best of times, and the sound of small children crying/arguing/being sick sets my teeth on edge in a way that the noise of older children or adults doesn't (although admittedly, I've never had a single problem with adults or over-10s showing themselves up on flights). I'd happily pay an extra hundred quid each way not to have that problem on long-haul flights.

Also - I think there should be far stricter rules regarding behaviour for everybody on flights. Staying in seats unless you need to use the loo/tend to a family member/walk about due to a medical issue; no alcohol to be consumed on the plane, and no admittance to their aircraft if you are over the drink-drive limit of the country you're departing from; earphones or silent mode to be used with all noise-making gadgets; no conversations loud enough to disturb the people around you (common sense needed here, obviously, as acceptable volume will vary depending on context). Fines/cancellations/bans to anybody who doesn't comply.

Pyrrah I had friends from overseas visit, and they booked train tickets for themselves and their infant daughter. When they booked, they were asked to mention any babies or children so that tickets could be issued, even though they were presumably free.

We then met up to take the train, I changed my seat to be near them (I was one, and they were a family of 5, so easier for me to sit with them rather than try to find 5 together elsewhere) and it turned out we were on the quiet carriage. For the love of everything, why would they make a reservation there when they even ASK if you have a baby with you.

And then the conductor decided to chide my already stressed friend about having the baby in the quiet carriage, even though she acknowledged that the system books babies in that carriage... so they obviously know it's a problem

end rant.

Some comments here reminded me of what KLM used to do on their flights (might still do, though I assume it's specific to the type of plane they're flying and the layout of it). They had what I called a baby bucket (suspect this isn't their term for it) which was set up behind a row of seats, and parents could put their children in and and it seemed as if they were seated in the next possible row, so they could keep an eye on them. The children played or whatever in this, which was something like a large travel cot.

The only people inconvenienced were myself and DH- we had the seats the bucket was attached to. It's the only time I was a bit irritated by children on a flight. Usually, if it's just the same child behind you for a transatlantic flight, they have to sleep or calm down sometime. Not so if the "child behind you" is being refreshed every 20 minutes or so.

Kooza, totally agree with you, that is also my experience of flying. If you are organised, take stuff for the dc, have an expectation of behaviour and engage with them- no you won't be able to read, watch a film or pretend to be single. You have to be on parent duty for hours.

I always get people helping ( with a bag or holding a dc hand when expected to descend a plane down virtually upright steps with dc and bag in the the dark) and sometimes I am very lucky and get a travelling gp who takes a fancy to the dc and asks to read with them.

And I travel longhaul for family reasons. And even if I didn't, I would still think about travelling long haul with my dc if I wanted to. The idea that someone may be on the flight who expects it to be child free or kids to travel in silence is ridiculous.

And putting your seat back as far as you can as soon as the seat belt sign is off is annoying for anyone ESP in the tiny seat sizes of economy. But that's another thread:)

I really haven't come across anyone who pulled a face at baby changing or bf on board. Why should they? It's normal. What's not normal is seat kicking or parents ignoring a couple of toddlers messing about and being disruptive. I would mention it to the cabin crew myself.

I also don't agree with bundling all families together. Segregation of dc? What next, old people not allowed to disembark til last as they are too slow?

I have a friend who travels business with her dc and their is an on flight nanny for hers provided by the airline as part of biz class service.

Children are the customers of the future. So it makes sense to be nice with them.

My worry with a family section is that it would set a whole load of children off and make it potentially worse.

I take DD on long-haul flights - I travel for work and she comes with me as there is no-one I can leave her with (I run my own business so not a problem that way).

She's generally an angel on the plane and a monster in the airports, but I do try and not have seats near other children. She is gregarious and if she is on her own she will sit and do colouring or watch a film but if there are other children to mess about with....

If they do decide to bring it in, then it needs to be done properly. I had a horrible time last year on a train to Manchester: I had to book and reserve seats in advance and while you can tick a box to reserve a seat in the Quiet Carriage, there is no box to tick to ask for one specifically not in the Quiet Carriage. We were assigned seats in that carriage and DD at 2.5 years decided that she was going to throw tantrums and generally be vile the entire way there.

I actually got up halfway through and apologised to the whole carriage and said that I was sorry we were forced to be there (no other seats available - conductor tried).

Contacted the railway and they seemed incapable of understanding why they needed to change the booking system.

Would hate to see what happens if they mess up and put a child in the quiet zone by mistake (and it will happen).

So to sum up:

It's OK to talk, laugh and shout your head off
It's OK for an obese person to take up more space than they are due
It's OK to get completely rat arsed and annoy the person next to you

But only if you are over 12. If you are under 12, you have to sit in a ghetto in case you are annoying at some point in the flight. So if you are a secondary school pupil wanted to read your magazine in peace, or play on your DSi, you are forced to sit surrounded by random babies and toddlers purely on grounds of age.

This actually happened to us on a Lufthansa plane. Some berk of a check in clerk made all the kids sit squashed in about 3 rows at the back on a plane that was less than half full (all the other rows had one person on). She basically set up an unofficial ghetto system. We were boxed in for ages while the stewardesses were fiddling about, and the kids couldn't get out to go to the loo or anything. When we complained the stewardesses gave us an earful. At that point, everyone rebelled, moved and spread themselves out on the plane in a more sensible fashion.

My view with regard to flight ghettos is that these are public transport systems. If people want peace and quiet, they should hire a private jet or put in earplugs.

In terms of keeping children more compliant on planes:

Make departure lounges and security processes more restful.
Allow small children to completely bypass queues and other things that wind them up.
Provide small activities and distractions on planes, like they did until about 10-15 years ago. Allow the cabin crew time to interact with children and give them training.
Prioritise small children for meals, drinks and toilets, etc.

It's not hard.

"Because then, no fucker can whinge about children on their flight EVER AGAIN"

I fly with children and would be in the 'family' zone and still whinge about some parents and some children. Of course some crying, loud enthusiastic talking and singing, flinging of grapes and wax crayons is to be expected, but allowing your child to vigorously kick the seat in front for 8 hours is too much. As is allowing your children to lean over the seat in front patting the occupant on the head and shrieking with laughter for 2 hours. Or lean over the seat behind and spit and blow raspberries.

But it's true - adults can be just as annyoing anyway.

I don't know why they have set rows - why don't they fill up frpm the front with child-free, and fill up from the back with families until they meet in the middle when the flight is full?

Exactly; choosing to go on a long haul flight with children just for a holiday? No thanks! We also go to visit family. The DDs have only met half of their family twice.

I get so nervous about flying, partly because I've always hated it and partly because I'm worried about someone getting arsey with the DDs mid-flight and not being able to get away from them. I always go totally overboard bringing thousands of sticker books and chocolate buttons to keep them quiet. But this 'children shouldn't be on planes' attitude keeps me on edge.