Parents Call Woman Rude For Trying To Switch Plane Seats To Get Away From Their Noisy Kids

Mar 06, 2023 by apost team

If you are going to go on a plane ride with toddlers onboard, chances are you might get distracted by the occasional child crying. If you try to go to sleep, you might have a hard time sleeping. While it can get irritating, babies don’t deserve to be yelled at or reprimanded since it’s basic instinctive communication for them.

It’s also important to remind oneself that some people don’t have the same opportunities as us and can have very different circumstances. While some parents would rather choose to leave their children at home, especially on occasions where trips are for work purposes, some of them simply don’t have a choice but to let their kids tag along because no one can look after them.

Then again, a person always has the right to seek assistance if something is causing them disturbance especially if that person needs to do important work onboard but cannot focus because of all the noise or if they need to sleep because they're tired. After all, the flight is not intended for specific people only, but for everyone on that flight. Of course, not all people understand that. But is that person in the wrong if they ask for assistance from airline staff?

Well, a couple had the same exact experience in February 2023 after they asked to switch seats when their trip didn’t go as planned due to a loud child. Sadly, the child's family didn’t take the situation well and called one of them rude for their decision.

The woman who posted revealed that she and her boyfriend sat in an aisle across a family of four, with the kids being around 5 years old while the toddler was around 2 years old. 

But even when the couple was still lining up, they already encountered problems with the family's kids.

“The five-year-old was bouncing off the walls, absolutely full of energy. He was trying to ride his carry-on like a car and kept ramming into my luggage by accident. The baby was crying very loudly as well. I felt bad for the parents because they were trying their best to keep their kids under control to no avail,” the woman shared.

The woman admitted that she didn’t feel comfortable with her seat knowing the baby had already been crying for a long time.

“To be honest, I wasn’t happy about sitting next to a rambunctious kid and a baby who had already been crying for 15+ minutes,” she said.

But since the plane wasn’t full, other passengers who requested to move seats were allowed by the flight attendant. So, the woman also tried her luck by asking the flight attendant if she could do the same.

Sadly, the flight attendant told her that they couldn’t accommodate her request due to weight distribution concerns on the plane.

“I decided that I also wanted to change our seats, but when I asked the flight attendant, she said no because of the weight distribution on the plane. It seemed most passengers congregated to the back of the plane to sit further away from this family,” the woman said.

She then tried to ask the flight attendant if she could purchase first-class tickets since there were still two seats available. Sadly, she was told she couldn’t because these things should be done at the counter. 

“I understood her points completely, so my boyfriend and I stayed in our original seats,” she shared.

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But their experience got even worse as the baby started crying while the older child couldn’t stay still.

“The baby cried for the first hour of the flight, and the older child kept bouncing in his seat and talking loudly. My boyfriend and I had noise-canceling headphones in, but we could still hear the children next to us,” she said.

Meanwhile, the woman tried to keep what she described as a “stoic expression” just so the parents wouldn’t notice that she felt annoyed over what was happening.

Then their worst nightmare came when the older kid spilled juice on the woman's shoes. While the parents apologized for the incident, they kept glaring at the couple until they landed.  

“At some point, the five-year-old accidentally spilled juice on my shoes from squeezing his juice box too hard (child and I had aisle seats so we were basically next to each other). The parents side-eyed me and my boyfriend the entire flight. They apologized for the juice incident when it happened, but I felt their glares until we landed,” she said.

When they finally got off the plane, the woman took the courage to ask why the parents kept looking in their direction throughout the flight. The husband then told the woman that they were being rude for “putting in so much effort to get away from them” and “going as far as offering to buy first-class tickets.”

The woman then explained their side and said: “I told them I didn’t mean any harm. It was the middle of the night and I was hoping to get some sleep during the flight. I wanted to find a solution without bothering anyone.”   

After taking her story to Reddit, other users agreed that the woman hadn't done anything wrong. One person suggested the parents were probably just "overtired and obviously stressed out."

What can you say about the woman’s decision to find ways to move seats? Would you have done the same thing if you were in the couple's position? Let us know what you think, and pass this on to your family and friends!