Originally Posted by
apaddyinuk
And I personally think this is the core of the dilemma! It is not so much that BA do not want UMs sitting beside men, its because Mr Fischer was dealt with very poorly and was made to feel embarrassed as the crew member clearly failed to use any tact in the enforcement of the rule!
By attempting to enforce this rule you're either saying:
1. You believe that the man is a pervert who can't be trusted around kids, or:
2. You believe that the kid is going to cry 'rape!' for no good reason.
There's no way can be 'tactful' about something as insulting as that.
As for 'enforcing company rules', personally I've routinely ignored stupid company rules in my professional career when it was clearly detrimental to our customers; I think you'll find that's the norm in most other industries, because the airline business seems to be one of the few which doesn't believe that 'the customer knows best'. Anyone who uses that excuse is merely trying to avoid taking the blame for their own actions by passing the buck: they are precisely what we use to call 'jobsworth' back in the days when Britons used to laugh at such people rather than take them seriously.
My question is what will happen if he wins this case, which I suspect he has a good chance of doing given it clearly is sexual discrimination? Either BA will have to start putting kids in their own section of the plane, or simply ban them from flying altogether to ensure that they're 'protected'.