Every flown on a flight when you find yourself surrounded by screaming kids? Parents who just don’t seem to care that their children’s wild and reckless behaviour is causing discomfort for the other passengers? I’m sure you have experienced that at some stage.. we all have.
Well now, you can choose to fly ‘kids free’ in a new service offered by the fine folks at Singapore Airlines. The upgrade is available through the airline’s budget carrier, Scoot Airlines, which guarantees you sit next to a passenger over the age of 12 for a mere $14. This section is located behind the business class cabin and offers 41 seats. To top it off it also offers a bigger seat so all the sulky and whiny adults can sit back, enjoy their peanuts and can stop giving parents on board dirty looks.
The folks at Scoot aren’t the only ones offering this service however, Tony Fernandez and his growing Air Asia brand also offers a Quite Zone in the Air Asia X service. It boasts a seven-row section that excludes children under 12. AirAsia X’s zone is home to “minimal noise with no disturbances” and “special ambient lighting,” the airline says on its Web site, “because we know that sometimes all you need is some peace and quiet for a more pleasant journey with us.”
We found this little excerpt from the NY Times Parent’s Blog and thought it was most fitting. It was a little note from recent parents Christina Diaz and Michael Rubinstein who were taking their twin boys on their fist 5 hour flight from San Francisco to Washington DC and decided to hand out “apology bags” to the other passengers which included some treats and this note:
“We’re twin baby boys on our first flight and we’re only 14 weeks old! We’ll try to be on our best behavior, but we’d like to apologize in advance just in case we lose our cool, get scared or our ears hurt. Our mom and dad (AKA our portable milk machine and our diaper changer) have ear plugs available if you need them.”
So the message here for the intolerant is rather simple, if you don’t like being around children when flying, your choices are simple;
(a) Bring along some Bose noise cancellation headphones
(b) Fly in ‘child free’ zones
(c) Take a boat!
And yeah, just be nice.
Kids are cool!