Parents are mortified when their kids are screaming on a flight. They didn't want this either.
A good pair of earplugs (e.g. loop) can help tremendously.
e.g. loop
Or a pair of non-meme plugs that's designed to actually block all noise. Mack's Ultra Soft are quite excellent.
Well kinda said I wasn't looking to rant about this part, but okay:
When the child is two seats over, my loops are not helping. When another child is running up and down the aisle every 20 mins, ear plugs aren't the solution either.
I simply would not choose a flight where the majority of people would be trying to sleep if I were a parent. I would not want to put myself in a situation where it could even happen, no one wants to be mortified and on a long flight it approaches certainty.
A screaming child on a 4h middle-of-the-day flight is annoying but bearable. Screaming children on a double-digit hour overnight flight ruins many people's days.
Some people have families in far away countries. I hate to say it dude, but it's just one of those things.
No one enjoys screaming children in an enclosed space, especially not parents who already have to deal with child nonsense on a daily basis.
Maybe you don't see it, but these situations are really distressing for parents and it would serve humanity well if we could have a little empathy for them.
This is the part that I always find mind boggling. Yeah, parents who don’t parent exist, but the vast majority want the screaming to stop just as much as anybody else, if not more…
I don’t mean this as a criticism, but I’m guessing you don’t have kids. I used to get annoyed whenever I ended up sitting next to infants on flights, but now I only get annoyed when said infants/toddlers are going wild and the parents are totally checked out.
If the parents are trying to calm their kids and it’s not working, I have nothing but sympathy for them.
I have kids and when I took them on trips when they were little, I would book the most direct option. I didn't consider the option where I could inconvenience the most entitled people.
I'll never get why people get so worked up by babies crying on airplanes. The kids parents are just trying to get somewhere, same as everyone else. The plane is not your bedroom, or office, theater, or library. You know what you're getting into when you board. You're going to be in close quarters with strangers. Some of them might be kids that cry, some might be so old or weak that they have trouble stuffing their oversized carry on into the overhead bin. The difference is the weak person could have chosen to check the bag. Can you tell what my flying pet annoyance is? You just never know what you're gonna get.
Like someone already said, the airlines don't do it bc there's no money in it.
If you're an adult who doesn't have or don't work around children it's hard to overstate how irritating they are. The noise, lack of self-awareness, the energy, the stickiness, and you have to censor yourself around them. Additionally, they're way harder to reason with (if they even can communicate) and parents are notoriously shitty and self-righteous. Finally adults have consequences. If an adult screams their head off, runs up and down the aisles, or hit people around them then flight attendants can do something
You also act like that child HAS to be on that plane. You can drive, you could leave the kid with someone else, you could take a train, a bus, or you could just not go. We know planes specifically are really uncomfortable for babies because of the pressure. You chose to have a kid presumably knowing that you'd be making sacrifices for them. Maybe one of those sacrifices should be flying until they're old enough to behave
I don’t mind kids on planes. They can be loud or obnoxious but adults can be worse, so whatever. If you have such a problem, you can drive, take a train or just not go, you know?
Same. I've flown more than most, sometimes with screaming kids nearby. Normally I don't mind beyond the extra noise, provided that I'm well rested. The times when getting proper rest onboard is important, I book business class, and I don't think I've ever seen kids in there.
I've had one instance of a baby in business class. Was flying from Johannesburg to London for work, so was lucky enough that work policy allowed business class for a flight of that length. Someone had a baby with them also in business and that kid screamed non stop virtually the entire flight. Was a lot of unhappy people when we landed.
Was an overnight flight too so the expectation was that everyone would sleep the majority of the trip. Nope.
It seems like a complete no brainer to me, I would choose it every time and pay extra for it
This part obviously isn't true, or else you would have paid for First or Business class. There's no guarantee that the expensive seats are kid-free, but it's much more likely. They'll give you free booze, too.
When I last flew international, my mum took business and the rest of us took economy. There was no noise on economy, but crying babies in business. The reason OP won't pay extra for that is probably because there is no guarantee at all that it will be any quieter. It is not the same thing as what they want.
Home alone did it right, parents in the front kids in the back
Disclaimer: I may or may not be on a 36h day with only an hour of sleep right now
Lemme guess: kids?
Also to answer your question https://www.alternativeairlines.com/child-free-flights . No child-free flights, but child-free zones on flights.
All the people here talking about "just use headphones with ANC" haven't been a seat or two away from a crying child. It's not the child's fault and often not that of the parents (they have to travel too), but having adults-only flights would be amazing. I'd pay extra too to be on a long-haul flight without kids. Some adults do act like kids too, but it's not possible to ban them.
And to the people acting mortified and all high and mighty: there are adults only places. Are you going to get offended about those too? The proposal isn't to ban kids from all flights. It's to offer some flights without kids.
Honestly thanks for getting it, I expected the odd parent to take some weird personal offence at me wanting an option to not fly with kids around and get all defensive, but I didn't expect quite this level of vitriol. It's not like I want them to not fly, like it seems is the suggested solution for me—or y'know the practical solution of chartering a bloody private jet(?!). I just want to sleep on a 14h overnight flight by removing myself from the situation preventing it, and will even (or rather, actually tried to) spend a bit more to do so, but clearly that's just me being an entitled arsehole.
Cheers for the great resource, it's a shame there's only a few options currently, but perhaps the list will grow. Tbh even just explicitly quiet zones being more prevalent would probably be a good solution for me. There are quiet carriages on pretty much all the trains in my country that don't even cost extra, and I've never seen young children in those. That's never seemed like a remotely controversial idea—I'm basically just looking for an equivalent for planes.
Agree on the ANC comment too, I've had top of the range Sony, Bose and Google ANC headphones and none can actually get rid of kid noise like screaming, they'll distort it a bit maybe. If anything the cancelling of the plane engine noise can emphasise it at times because it's the only thing that makes it through.
Not gonna pile up any more than others already have lol. But to answer your question, airlines don't do it because it's just not feasible at scale. You say you'd gladly pay extra but then you'll get a flight 50% cheaper and you'll think "eh I'll take the risk". Or maybe you won't, but a lot of people will. Planes are expensive and they have to consistently fill them as much as possible, which they won't if they exclude such a vast demographic.
I mean, it's technically feasible, but then you'd have to pay 5 or 6 times the price to cover for empty seats.
I never understood why people jump on planes without noise canceling headphones and expect to be sleeping while sitting in a uncomfortable chair.
You can choose to bring noise canceling headphones but you choose not to. The infant can't choose.
Kids aside, I don't know how anyone is able to sleep in an upright chair to begin with.
If you're tired, you'll sleep in almost any position. I'm not talking good sleep, 8 hours and waking up well-rested.
Recently, I feel asleep on a train, sitting in a jump seat, going sideways, my head against a window. Some evenings, after work, I fall asleep in my living room chair.
Some people even fall asleep while driving a car.
True while I had COVID recently I nearly fell asleep sitting bolt upright lmaoo. Still, for many it's difficult to near impossible to sleep on a plane unless you're lucky enough to get a window seat!
If I have a window seat, I literally can't stay awake on a flight. I don't know why. There's been times I've sat down and fallen asleep before the plane is even in the air. But I'm also like 5'4" and actually fit comfortably in budget airline seats.
There's a spectrum, you can always charter a jet, and only allow other adults to join you on the charter. But that's expensive.
As you pull in more and more strangers, you have to accept a broader spectrum of people's lifestyles, including they need to move children.
From an airline perspective, it wouldn't be a good look if you were excluding parents, so it would be a PR nightmare. Most people belong to families, even if they don't have kids themselves, so a bad experience any member of their family had could reduce the amount of popularity your airline enjoy
However, it would be nice if airlines said, the back of the plane is the safest for children, which statistically it is, so children are only allowed to sit in the last 10 rows of the flight. That would be amazing
That would mean additional logistics and therefore costs for the airlines. So, no. As long as people accept being squeezed into cattle class and treated like cattle, the airlines have no incentive to change.
Honestly, I will never wrap my head around how people can happily bring infants on any flight.
Parents want and need to travel too, and they can't just abandon their babies at home and feel bad leaving them with other relatives. For overseas trips your only alternative to flying is a weeklong boat trip, and parents would need to make preparations for diapers and a whole lot of other things just to make this trip.
Babies and small children will make noise on buses, planes, cars, boats and trains or wherever they are. They don't save it for a specific moment but it's understandable they get stressed when riding something for the first time. You and I were babies at some point.
I would choose it every time and pay extra for it.
For domestic/continental travel, ride a train and book a solo sleeper car.
For flying, well... book a private charter flight and invite only adults/no one for guaranteed peace and quiet.
Not enough demand. Most people aren't going to pay extra for a child free flight, especially if it's a short flight. Most people will easily put up with a screaming child for a two hour flight if they can save several hundred dollars that they don't have anyway.
They exist. They're called private jets.
Various adults-only flights (and I think even an airline, but I might be mistaken) did exist. You could argue about 9/11 and later financial troubles factoring into their demise, but they're usually more expensive and less frequent/convenient and thus are not popular.
Second, if you can afford to fly enough that this is a regular occurrence, get noise-canceling headphones.
Third, not all people who are traveling with small children are doing it because they want to: funerals, work relocation, etc. are a thing that are impractical to do via other modes of transportation. If my work and the internet were good enough, I'd love to just boat everywhere out of my current country, but that's not going to happen (although I don't have kids, so it wouldn't matter for this post, I suppose).
Like someone already said: Good pair of earbuds do wonders. Get the noice cancelling ones and you’re good to go.
Noisy kids (or noisy people in general) will continue to exist and as long as you use planes or public transport you have to deal with them.
Shoutout to every jackass who FaceTimes in a train.
Let's take a moment to talk about the swathe of fully grown adults who think it's OK to not use headphones on public transport...
Grow up. You think it’s fun for us when our kids flip out? What are we supposed to do, hit them so you don’t get a little bit disturbed?
Grow the fuck up and realize this world isn’t just you.
If hitting your kids is the only way you can think of for getting them to behave, you're very much part of the problem.
Did Australia to London, plane full of screaming babies. Slept 16 of the 24 hours flight time.
What’s my secret? Anti-psychotics.
Damn, this conversation didn't stay casual.
But, in fairness, your post text was pretty aggressive for a casual conversation.
But, as people have already said, there ain't no such because nobody is/was willing to pony up often enough.
Besides, airplanes aren't sleeping berths. That part of your premise is flawed. It's okay to sleep on flights, but it isn't part of the package. There's no laying down, and no promise made that any flight will be quiet enough for any given individual to sleep, babies and kids or not.
Your expectations of flying being geared towards sleep just aren't realistic. It never has been, barring very limited occasions here and there.
Tbh, you can't even have a realistic expectation of adults being quiet enough for everyone's sleep needs, even if everyone was trying to sleep. Snoring, farting, groans and creaks. Someone would be unable to sleep.
Babies in particular are really hard to ignore for sure, their cries are supposedly evolved to alarm adults into action. Even small kids crying and screaming can cut through a lot. But that's life. Mass transit always has a risk of that kind of event because even the most stable and comfortable vehicles can't guarantee a child won't be bothered enough for occasional fits.
There's no current airlines offering such, not that a quick search could find (and I don't doubt you had already done so). So you're just as screwed as anyone on a bus, train, or a family road trip.
If you want advice on ways to filter out baby screams, let me know. I've done enough time around sick infants to have sorta found ways to avoid being upset by it, which means I can half doze through short crying spells. It's all about riding the response it causes and letting it go while doing some meditation and breath control. Mix in a little self-programming under a controlled setting, and you can eventually mostly tune it out.
Damn, this conversation didn’t stay casual.
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