Child-free flight zones: what do you think?

[HelenMumsnet]

Morning. We've just seen this article in the Telegraph about a Malaysian airline which has launched 'quiet zones' on selected flights, where children under the age of 12 are not permitted to sit.

It seems that a recent poll of Telegraph Travel readers also found that nearly 70% would support the introduction of child-free flights.

What do you think?

Should people have the right to travel without being 'disturbed by noisy children'? Or not?

[ElectricMonk]

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.

[curryeater]

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.

[Trills]

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.

[Chandon]

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

[LynetteScavo]

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.

[TenthMuse]

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.

[lljkk]

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.

[Fillyjonk75]

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.

[Iwillorderthefood]

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?

[TenthMuse]

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.

[Trills]

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.

[kohl]

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...

[ItsOkayItsJustMyBreath]

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?

[ShirleyB25]

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

[Manoodledo]

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 .

[stradbally]

I have no problem with noise, babies are people, they've a right to be there, and listening to a bit of crying never killed anyone. Hate being kicked in the back for hours on end by a kiddie in the seat behind though! Why do parents NEVER try to stop their child from doing this?!

[amothersplaceisinthewrong]

I think it is a great idea - nothing worse than being stuck on a long haul flight with a screaming baby.

[louisianablue2000]

Sounds like hell, can't imagine anything worse than being on a 'family flight' where the irresponsible parents think it's OK to pay their children even less attention than normal because everyone else is a parent as well. Other people's children are hell, i don't want to be forced into a flight with nothing but.

My children are of course incredibly well behaved and charm everyone .

[MildredIsMyAlterEgo]

I wish there could be a no farting cabin.

Someone near me was letting off some unbelievably smelly guffs on the last flight I was on.

I was not impressed.

Child noise would have been much more preferable.

[StillStuck]

I have flown regularly in the past with DS, as our family is very scattered across europe and also sometimes because DH's job takes him all over the place.

I am usually conscious of wary /disapproving glances as we wait for the flight/ board the plane. Then at the end of the flight, without exception, people have actually come up to me to thank me and say how well behaved DS is.
Its not hard - I just make sure his needs (food, comfort, entertainment) are met and if necessary put my own needs second.

I have only ever once been bothered by a screaming baby on a flight. ds kept trying to offer it food/ toys. I could smell from where we were that the poor thing needed a nappy change but its mother just ignored it and read her book. so it wasn't really the child who was the problem there.

did make me chuckle though when we flew a month or so ago, as DS (age 2) protested when he saw a baby on the aeroplane and told me that he wanted the baby to get off the aeroplane and stay on the runway. seems like he will be the first to try and book on a childfree flight.

[allagory]

You wonder what the reaction would be I said there should be an old people only section on the grounds that I can't stand to listen to them moaning on. People would say that it is wrong to generalise about people because of their age and it was age discrimination - there are all kinds of old people and yes, some of them moan but some of them don't.

But people never say that about children: there's only one kind of child and that kind makes a lot of noise and so should be segregated from the rest of society.

[AdoraBell]

I would love a child free flight, but I have to take the buggers with me