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Airlines offer no-crying sections

marketwatch.com

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Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#41

Post by serf »

jwcooper wrote: post #29
vkou wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Taking a baby onto an airplane is equivalent to torturing it... And, as a consequence, everyone around it.

My sarcasm meter might be off, but regardless, this is nonsense. You can easily mitigate the pressure issues by giving your kid something to snack on or a bottle during takeoff and landing.

that isn't true for everyone.

as a kid, and now as an adult I've had generic allergies that have caused eustachian tube disorder(s) throughout my life.

Airplane rides cause agonizing headaches for me for about an hour after landing, and there is little to be done about it other than waiting through it. It sucks. The first time I experienced such a thing I felt as if I was going to be permanently deaf or disabled due to it, it's that bad.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#42

Post by Mc_Big_G »

I just arrived from a 12hr+ flight from Madrid to SF with 2 babies just behind me that literally, in the correct sense of the term, screamed the entire flight. I'm a tolerant person, but banning babies, or having no-baby flights, seemed like an extremely reasonable thing to do.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#43

Post by nagrom »

stephengillie wrote: post #32
johansch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets quite tiring to blast high volume music or white noise for long periods. (And the noise-cancelling is utterly useless for screams.)

Why is noise canceling useless for screams?

Noise cancellation tech works best for low-pitched constant-ish sounds, like the airplane engines, or noise from a fan. Noise cancellation doesn't work well on higher-pitched, oscillating sounds, like screaming or voices.

This is probably why the grand-old parent recommends earplugs in addition.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#44

Post by jaegerpicker »

cliffu wrote: post #39
andrenotgiant wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Really? This is the main conclusion you draw from this article? Society isn't intolerant of children, society sees that there is a market for increased comfort in airlines, and that "peace and quiet" is an integral part of comfort. They aren't charging more for children to fly.

That's the real solution, charge more for small children and use the extra charge to reduce prices of the seats nearby. It should be prohibitively expensive to bring a crying child on the plane.

BS, Parents have to fly sometimes and upping the cost will do nothing aside from harming parents by making them pay more. It won't deter people from flying at all. Believe me as a Parent the airlines make it difficult enough to fly, that very few parents do it without a pretty compelling reason.

Even if it did reduce the number of children on board, that's a worse solution than the problem currently is. Children learn by doing, including manners on planes. Remove a generation of children from anything and you'll have a generation that has no idea how to behave during that activity.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#45

Post by idan »

Whether airlines charge for this dubiously-implemented perk is meaningless. It's a business transaction for transportation, end of story.

As a parent who has had the dubious pleasure of flying with children of my own and experiencing the children of others, here's a far more important takeaway:

As shitty as it is for you to experience a miniature crying human, it is ten times shittier for the parents. The emotion you should be reaching for is pity—for the child that can't communicate its desires, and the parents who are desperately trying to divine what baby wants before dying under the weight of every. single. person. staring. at. them.

As for the parents who apparently "ignore" their misbehaving kids—there are no lack of poor parents out there, but more often than not, ignoring is the fastest path to ending a tantrum ("don't feed the trolls"). It's doubly difficult to do when a plane full of people are giving you the evil eye.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#46

Post by guard-of-terra »

rayiner wrote: post #26
guard-of-terra wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mostly cry without any reason watsoever. Even today children crying gets them shaken violently in some cultres. I can't imagine pre-historic humans to be more well-tempered and tolerant than today. It doesn't make sense.

> They mostly cry without any reason watsoever. Not really, it's just that we find it difficult as adults to empathize enough to understand what's bothering them. Children cry because they're hungry, because they've got gas, because they're sick or uncomfortable, because they're overstimulated, or because they're bored. Since they eat every few hours, have developing digestive systems, have developing temperature reg…

There will never be anyone around able to empathize enough to understand what's bothering them. Why bother crying?

Why don't kittens, baby rabbits or calves cry that loud that much? Instead they happily crawl around. What makes human babies so problematic and miserable?

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#47

Post by CamperBob2 »

saidajigumi wrote: post #40

Having used Etymotic in-ear headphones for well over a decade, I won't get on a plane without them. As in, I once drove back to the office at 4am the morning before an early flight because I realized I'd left them there. Assuming you've got a good fit, they act as -25dB earplugs with no music playing. Playing music at a moderate volume over that provides a huge masking effect[1] to external sound. Cranky babies, loud…

This. What kind of moron gets on a plane without earplugs or earphones?

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#48

Post by CaptainZapp »

kevinrpope wrote: post #27
CaptainZapp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active noise cancellation might work; however you’re usually not allowed to use electronic devices during takeoff or landing. Which is really not a problem, since I'd wager that you're awake anyway during that period of the flight.

If you're trying to focus on something it is a problem. I hadn't even considered the sleep part of this, I was thinking about reading, programming, etc, all of which will be derailed by a screaming baby.

Weird, for me it's exactly the opposite. I remember the horrors of an 11 hour flight from LAX to AMS with a baby yelling away for the entire flight and not a chance to sleep.

I hear you loud and clear, though. It just didn't occur to me that this could be a problem for such a short period of the flight.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#49

Post by DanBC »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #12
pilif wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the child is in a group of other humans, the louder it cries the more likely it is to be noticed. The more annoying the cry is to other people, the more likely it is to get help. Humans always lived in groups, so being loud and annoying has huge evolutionary advantages over being quiet.

They mostly cry without any reason watsoever. Even today children crying gets them shaken violently in some cultres. I can't imagine pre-historic humans to be more well-tempered and tolerant than today. It doesn't make sense.

> They mostly cry without any reason watsoever.

This is false.

It is rare for a child under the age of 6 months to cry for no reason. Children under this age cry to communicate a need - they are in pain, they are hungry, they are cold, they are scared. Once the parent has met the need the child will stop crying.

It is incredibly traumatic for parents to have a crying child - the cries are evolved to be distressing to make parents assess the needs. Support groups exist for "cholic" (baby crying with no apparent reason).

Even over this age children usually have a reason to cry. They don't just cry for the sake of crying.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#50

Post by Adrock »

scotty79 wrote: post #28
vkou wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Taking a baby onto an airplane is equivalent to torturing it... And, as a consequence, everyone around it.

1000 times this. When airplane starts to descend my ears do funny thing. I begin to hear everything like from under a meter of water. My ears also hurt like hell. And it doesn't stop. On my first flight ever, I suffered for half an hour waiting for this feeling to pass. No amount of swallowing helped. Then I told my friend about it and he ssugested that I blow the air out through the nose while holding it shut with m…

I've experienced this to different degrees in my travels. One time it felt like I was being stabbed in the brain with an ice pick for the entire 6 hour cross country flight and no amount of blowing/swallowing/yawning would help.

It's a form of Eustacian tube dysfunction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustachian_tube#Disorders

My ENT recommends taking a hit of Afrin nasal spray during takeoff and again just before descent.

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