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The opposite of baby fever.
By Zayda Slabbekoorn — Last updated on Oct 18, 2023
While we can all feel empathy for the parents of crying babies on a plane, that empathy can be a little harder to grasp when the parents not only ignore the baby's crying but apparently give up all sense of control over the baby.
This was one woman's experience when she refused to give up her seat to a mom.
In a TikTok video, this experienced traveler shared how she always aligns her sleep schedule with her flights. Exhausted from an already long day of traveling, she was ready to fall asleep comfortably in her carefully chosen aisle seat after boarding the plane.
With a tap on the shoulder, another plane passenger quickly broke her comfort, asking if she’d move seats. With a baby in her arms and her husband behind her, the woman asked if she’d prefer to have a window seat.
“You can always ask,” the user says empathetically in the video, “The problem is the people who get mad when they don’t get their way.”
Being that she’d chosen an aisle seat for comfort, she told the woman that she would prefer to stay in her own seat. Disgruntled, the woman slid past her into her window seat with the baby, and her husband returned to his window seat.
“I think out of spite this woman refused to deal with her child,” the woman said.
Finally dozing back to sleep, the user was completely out before the plane had even taken off.
When she finally woke, ten thousand miles high, she looked down to see the woman’s baby in her lap.
“When I woke up, the child was climbing on top of me.”
Stunned at the infant crawling around in her lap, she did all that she could think to do — she went back to sleep.
“I did not know what to do,” she admits.
Comments on the video were quick to give her suggestions. One commenter says, “I would have called a flight attendant.”
Another took a much different route, saying, “I would have screamed and caused a scene…pushing the child off of me acting like it was a spider crawling on me. But, I’m extra like that.”
Another suggestion just eliminates the whole situation: “Adult flights only please.”
Airlines generally don't require travelers to give up their seats to accommodate families.
Though airlines and flight attendants will try to do what they can to ensure families with young children sit together, that may not always be an option. Those who pay for a specific seat will usually have priority. And while it's not exactly frowned upon to ask someone to switch seats with you, acting out for not getting your way is.
“As much as it’s possible, passengers should be choosing their seats ahead of time for this exact reason,” Fora travel advisor Nicole Campoy Jackson told People. “I don’t think that you can board a plane with the expectation of someone leaving their seat for you.”
That said, travelers should take into account the circumstances when being asked to switch seats. As etiquette expert Diane Gottsman told Thrillist, "a parent that has already exhausted every other option" is a "justifiable excuse" for asking to switch seats. However, Gottsman noted that it's still ultimately the passenger's choice.
Most people agree that it's a family's responsibility to ensure they sit together.
Instances of families requesting seat swaps are common, and many people agree that it's no one's responsibility but the family's to make sure they sit together — and it's certainly the family's responsibility to keep hold of their infant if their seat swap request is declined. Empathy and respect go both ways, after all.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer who focuses on pop culture analysis and human interest stories. Catch up with them on Instagram or TikTok.