Air Travel Quiz

You’re on a plane, and your toddler has been having a tantrum. Her behavior is so extreme that the flight has been delayed for 15 minutes while they wait for you to get your child under control. Do you:

1. apologize to the other 112 passengers on the flight
2. ask the flight attendant to assign you to a later flight and leave the plane, to gain more time to get the kid under control
3. just keep holding her on your lap and expecting the rest of the plane to listen to her screaming while they all wait for you

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When it becomes clear that you will not be putting a stop to your child’s behavior, the pilot has your family removed from the flight so you will no longer delay the other 112 passengers. Do you:

1. feel embarrassed that your child caused such a disturbance and inconvenience to so many other people?
2. take the opporunity as an example to the child of how bad behavior results in unpleasant consequences?
3. pitch your own tantrum for the media so the airline will give you free tickets to make up for acting as if all those other people on the plane were just as important as you?

Apparently all the hullabaloo is because the airline, following FAA regulations, required the child to be in a seat and buckled in before they’d take off. The parents think this is an unreasonable thing, and they’re completely wrong. The safety issue isn’t just to keep their crotchfruit in one piece, it’s also to prevent her from injuring another passenger when her unsecured body goes flying around the cabin in the event of an emergency landing.

The father said his family would never fly AirTran again. Sounds to me like a selling point for AirTran, right there.