Catluvgal, that is brilliant! Maybe I will start to take that action when I see a child separated from its parents, although I'll need to start working out it happens so much.
You also remind me of another event that occured this year.
My partner and I were sitting in an airport cafe when a family came in with a very new-born baby. They proceeded to sit there chatting to a friend they'd bumped into while their baby screamed away. True to form said child was going to be on MY flight (aaaaaaaaaaargh). The conversation with the friend yielded that after my flight they were taking a connecting flight from Gatwick to New York !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry, there just aren't enough exclamation marks in the world for that brilliant piece of information.
Sure enough the child was sat directly behind me on my flight with both parents and another passenger. The child had screamed from entering the airport lounge and was still screaming. There were some empty sets of seats throughout the plane and a member of cabin crew felt bad for the parents it would seem (!!!!... you get the idea) and asked if they would like to move to one of the empty 3-seat sections so they would "have more room". What on earth!
The very quick passenger sat next to them said, to his credit, "Oh, it's probably just easier if I move to one of those and then you'll still have 3-seats available to you." Good for him, taking his chance to escape. Still left me with this flaming, screaming child behind me for the entire flight.
Why on earth did the cabin crew not see fit to ask those around the baby if they would like to move further away? I mean really, if I was cabin crew I would totally have shown some respect and decency to the poor people who paid to be on a flight (not half-price like the baby will have paid) and were having to suffer this trauma.
And when I say traua, I do not exaggerate, I suffer from misophonia. Misophonia isn't just the simple dislike of certain noises that some people think it is, I have had my brain waves measured while having an induced attack and my brain does go into overdrive causing me to go into a rage then eventually to hit out as I try and escape the situation because I literally feel like my head is about to explode and I don't want it to.
This condition is very common among those with even mild mental illness, people with no health conditions, and particularly common among people with Aspergers or Autism (of which there are many and likely to be at least one on any given flight). Why are the rights of people like us not considered, we're not the ones causing a disturbance to others after all?
Last edited by Random; 11/12/10 03:18 PM.