Do you REALLY feed your under 2 burgers?

[StarlightWonderStarlightBright]

was the reply from Air Canada check-in clerk who was trying to explain to me that although I had 'child meal' on my ticket, there was no food on board for my 15 month old because it is up to me to bring my own jar of mush.

I told him I have no mush as my child does not eat mush but real food and he looked at me with the most patronising, disbelieving and repremanding look and 'accused' me of feeding her 'burgers', to which I replied 'of course I do'.

He then went on to say that never before had he come across a parent who had not brought 'special' food for their baby.

And the meals we just had to LAX and back were massive... okay, not by dH standards, but well beyond what DC or I could finish off on our own. Heaps for toddler-DS to choose from.

What did the "child meal" on your ticket mean, if not that they provide food?

It said:

Adult 1. Meal preference: Adult meal
Adult 2. Meal preference: Adult special - veg/non-dairy
Child. Meal preference: child meal.
Infant. Meal preference: child meal.

Thing is, - I booked it with Expedia rather than the airline directly, so perhaps that is where the confusion came in!?

But because it said it on the ticket, I felt I had 'paid for it'. Blardy well cost £80 to sit on my lap with no baggage allowance so I suppose given it was on the ticket AND the cost of it it hadn't occured to me that they wouldn't feed her. The reason for the dialogue in the first place was because they 'forgot' to provide food for her on the way out (resulting in a screaming hysteric meldown) so I thought I'd ensure it was on board for the return flight when we checked in.

'I wasn't there so don't know how the interaction between OP and check-in staff went down, but I rather suspect the "half-wittedness" may have been less one-sided than OP suggests.'

Thanks very much brokenarm. Why would I lie about it? You might not think it a big deal, but most parents know that food is a parenting tool as well as nurishment and IT SAID IT ON THE TICKET so I thought it was an error rather than a policy and only found out too late that they never expected to feed her.

Also, not that it would have occured to me to take food anyway, there has been crazy security over the past few days and foodstuff has been prevented from going through.

"Infant. Meal preference: child meal."

Yep - that would make me think they were providing a meal too. I would complain.

Okay, - will write early in the morning.

If your ticket said she was getting a child meal, then i would expect that was what we were getting and so wouldn't bring another meal for DD (12 months). She could quite easily eat a whole adult airline meal so wouldn't be very happy to share with her at all!

Air Canada attempted to give me a child's meal and a colouring book, whilst I was traveling alone, aged 16.

I carefully explained to the Air Hostess that as a 16 year old female, my calorific requirements were much higher than the child's meal provided, which was why I had chosen to pay for an adult seat and meal.

I withered her.

(I was a bumptious twat at 16)

LOL

"because it is up to me to bring my own jar of mush." how are you supposed to do that? twice I was asked to bin the jar of baby food I had baught for DD4 before boarding the plane (not a canadian Airline though) as it was considered as a "liquide" and therefore not allowed in the plane for safety reasons.

We took a niece away on holiday a few years ago when she was nearly 1 and (because we weren't used to taking children anywhere, not having any of our own at that point) we phoned the airline (Continental) to check she would get food. We were told they could only order one meal per seat, and advised to order a child's meal for the seat and then ask for an extra adult's meal (they were more likely to have a spare one of these). Worked out fine in the end, but seemed a bit of a rubbish way to organise it.

Please do write. Organisations that make our lives more difficult should be told that they are doing so.