Mom Flying With Her Baby Told By Angry Passenger It's An 'Unspoken Rule' That Babies Aren't Allowed In Business Class
It's easy to understand why both sides were upset in this situation.
Tomsickova Tatyana | Shutterstock The truth is, there are some places where babies just shouldn’t be. But, whether you like it or not, babies have to get from one place to another just like the rest of us. There’s a long history of people complaining about babies crying on planes, but for the most part, everyone understands that when parents are traveling, they have to bring their babies with them.
One woman had no problem with a baby being on a plane in general. She just believed that the infant should be in Economy, where it is apparently acceptable to cry and scream if necessary. When a mother brought her baby with her to business class, the woman lost it.
The mom asked if she was in the wrong for bringing her baby to business class with her.
“I recently flew from NYC to Zurich with my 9-month-old,” she wrote in her Reddit post. “It was a red eye, so I figured I had some points to burn and I booked a business class lay flat so both of us would be able to get some sleep. I got on the flight and unloaded us. Baby was chilling, just looking around.”
Juliia Abramova | Pexels
“A woman comes to take the seat next to me and I hear her say pretty loudly, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she continued. “I didn’t think anything of it. Flight took off. Baby [laid] down and slept for three hours. At that point, baby woke up and was hungry, so cried. I immediately sat her up and went to make her a bottle. She was crying for a total of, I dunno, two minutes?”
Her baby's crying was the moment a fellow passenger decided she had had enough.
“The woman next to me, who had been sleeping, flies up, proceeds to give me the finger, and stomps over to the flight attendant deck where she loudly tells them that I need to be ‘put in economy,’” the mom shared. “When she comes back, she tells me that babies don’t belong in business class and if I can’t ‘control my infant’ I shouldn’t be there.”
“I told her I was doing my best and that she can, with all due respect, [expletive] off, and if she didn’t want the roulette of who she sat next to on a commercial flight she could fly her [expletive] private,” she said. “She put in her headphones and didn’t speak to me the rest of the flight.”
Later, the woman told her mother-in-law about what had happened, and she was surprised by her response. “She said she agrees that babies shouldn’t be in business class, that it’s an unspoken rule that if you’re flying with a child, you should fly economy,” she recounted.
One expert believes that babies and young children don’t belong in first or business class.
Patrick Smith, a pilot and travel blogger, addressed this issue. He shared two different experiences he had in which he paid extra to sit in business class, but his experience was ruined by crying and screaming children and babies. “When you’re flying in long-haul first or business class, you aren’t merely paying for transportation,” he said. “You are paying for comfort.”
Mikkel Kvist | Pexels
He continued, “That includes not having your experience wrecked by disruptive passengers of any age … In premium class, there’s a higher standard and greater expectations. And while perhaps you have the right to bring your kids along with you, you do not have the right to ruin the experience of those around you.”
It’s easy to sympathize with the mom who was just trying to enjoy her flight. However, everyone else in business class was trying to do the same thing. It doesn’t sound like her baby was overly disruptive, but she didn’t exactly help the situation by responding combatively to the angry passenger. It’s a difficult situation all around.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
