I’ve written about the teen who was booted off a flight for having a coughing attack. I’ve also shared the story about the mom who was escorted off a plane because she was allegedly making other passengers uncomfortable while breastfeeding her baby on board a flight. Then there’s the incident involving the family who was forced off an airplane when they couldn’t get their toddler daughter to stop crying. Now comes another report about a mom and her toddler getting kicked off a plane because she allegedly refused a flight attendant’s request to medicate her son to get him to stop saying “Bye bye, plane.”
Do you sense a pattern here?
According to news reports, a mom from suburban Atlanta said she and her 19-month-old son were flying from Atlanta to Oklahoma last month on a Continental Express flight that made a stop in Houston. As the plane was taxiing in Houston on its way to Oklahoma the toddler “started saying ‘Bye, bye plane'” over and over. According to the boy’s mom, the Continental flight attendant was not pleased by the tot’s chattiness.
“At the end of her speech, she leaned over the gentleman beside me and said, ‘It’s not funny anymore. You need to shut your baby up,”‘ the boy’s mom told an Atlanta television crew.
When the toddler’s mother asked the flight attendant if she was joking, she said the stewardess replied, “You know, it’s called baby Benadryl.”
The boy’s mother then replied: “Well, I’m not going to drug my child so you have a pleasant flight.”
According to the toddler’s mom other passengers sitting near her began speaking up on her behalf. That’s when the flight attendant reportedly announced the plane was aborting take off, returning to the gate, and the mother and son were going to be taken off the flight. In the end mom and tot were escorted off the plane, but their bags apparently didn’t leave with them.
“I was crying, I was upset and I was thinking, ‘What am I going to do? I don’t have anything with me, I don’t have any more diapers for the baby, no juice, no milk,” the boy’s mom told the TV station.
As for ExpressJet Airlines, which flies as Continental Express on behalf of Continental Airlines, a spokesperson told reporters they received a complaint letter from the boy’s mom and “intend to investigate” the matter.
Regular readers of this blog know how many hours I have spent on airplanes with my toddler. I can’t fathom having a flight attendant abort a take off because a child was repeating the same sentence over and over (welcome to parenthood). As it stands now the flight attendant has not gone public with her side of the story so I will withhold judgment on her actions. However, I think it is telling that it was another Continental flight attendant who considered a coughing teen a “security risk” and booted her from a flight too. I’m not sure if the chatty toddler fell into the same category, but it would seem to me that these particular flight attendants should be schooled about the virtue of patience.
What do you make of the incident?