Is this a safety issue that has not been addressed?
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Is this a safety issue that has not been addressed?
Travel with low-cost airlines who do not assign seats is a problem especially for those traveling with small children.
We had a recent experience of being separated from our three children (age 2, 6, 10) on a flight even though we had paid for priority boarding. I realize this has safety implications, hence my posting.
I’m not an expert but as a basic measure surely something along the following lines would be safer than doing nothing:
If a child cannot be seated with their parents / guardian and must seat beside a stranger then that stranger should be handed a safety leaflet so that he / she realizes that the child becomes their responsibility in the event of an emergency.
Or
During the safety briefing all passengers should be made aware of above.
If there are no procedures in place then during an emergency, parents will search for their children perhaps going against the flow of others trying to exit the aircraft.
Have the safety implications of scattering families with young children throughout the aircraft been thought through by the relevant authorities? I feel if it was then this sort of thing wouldn’t happen and can only surmise that in this fast moving aviation world they may be distracted or trying to play catch up?
We had a recent experience of being separated from our three children (age 2, 6, 10) on a flight even though we had paid for priority boarding. I realize this has safety implications, hence my posting.
I’m not an expert but as a basic measure surely something along the following lines would be safer than doing nothing:
If a child cannot be seated with their parents / guardian and must seat beside a stranger then that stranger should be handed a safety leaflet so that he / she realizes that the child becomes their responsibility in the event of an emergency.
Or
During the safety briefing all passengers should be made aware of above.
If there are no procedures in place then during an emergency, parents will search for their children perhaps going against the flow of others trying to exit the aircraft.
Have the safety implications of scattering families with young children throughout the aircraft been thought through by the relevant authorities? I feel if it was then this sort of thing wouldn’t happen and can only surmise that in this fast moving aviation world they may be distracted or trying to play catch up?
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Come on...Play the game now....
The only reason you would have been sat apart after paying for priority boarding would be because you were late to gate! if ud really wanted to sit your family all together you would have followed the terms and conditions, (which im sure you will have read 
) and got to the gate on time...
) and got to the gate on time...
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Eagle Eyed, terms and conditions aside, I think Sober Lark makes a very valid point. I am currently studying aviation safety at Masters level, and I have to admit I have not come across anything that considers the issue of seat allocation, on low fair airlines, and emergency evacuation passenger flow. That’s not to say there aren’t studies out there, but I will speak to my tutors about it and see what the general consensus is.
Last edited by Will964; 30th Sep 2007 at 00:55.
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I think all this highlights is the importance of parents taking responsibility for their family in order to avoid such problems. Families are already treated as victims and get to pre board aircraft just because they have kids! I believe that any other paying passenger who had the forsight to check in early and get a low sequence number should have priority over careless families who turn up late and expect the world to stop spinning for them...
Pay €0.01 for your flight and join the queue with the rest of us...
Pay €0.01 for your flight and join the queue with the rest of us...
Not-so eagle-eyed, generalisations apart, re-read the posts - you have missed the point.
Many adults can barely cope with something as simple as turbulence - how is a child supposed to sort themselves out in an emergency whilst separated from their parent(s)?
It would most certainly be a natural parenty instinct to attempt to assist their children in such a situation and would cause chaos in an evacuation. That's the issue - nothing to do with timely arrival or otherwise at the gate.
Many adults can barely cope with something as simple as turbulence - how is a child supposed to sort themselves out in an emergency whilst separated from their parent(s)?
It would most certainly be a natural parenty instinct to attempt to assist their children in such a situation and would cause chaos in an evacuation. That's the issue - nothing to do with timely arrival or otherwise at the gate.
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For what it's worth I think this is potentially a huge safety issue. I am a professional pilot on the B737. Yet I know that, if I were a passenger involved in an evacuation I would not allow myself to become separated from my young children. If they were not sat with me and an evacuation began, I would move heaven and earth to get to where they were before I worried about getting out and, to be honest, I wouldn't be able to care too much about other passengers in the process. The only way I can explain this is to say that, absolutely, being a parent comes first. What is more, I doubt any parent would be different and I don't believe they should be obliged to forget their kids and get out with the flow.
Incidentally it's not just the low cost carriers who can't be bothered to accomodate young children next to their parents. I remember checking in to a BA flight recently - in front of me was a father (who had checked in on line, with seats allocated, the night before) being told that, due to some administrative cock up, he, his wife and four children under six years old would all have to sit separately. I think the youngest child (just over 2) got to sit directly in front of her mother. Other than that they were all quite literally rows apart from each other. Being the home of wonderful British customer service, the cabin crew did absolutely nothing to help, didn't try to move passengers about and then shouted at the 2 year old so much she spent the whole flight crying. Nice work BA. And very very unsafe to boot...
Incidentally it's not just the low cost carriers who can't be bothered to accomodate young children next to their parents. I remember checking in to a BA flight recently - in front of me was a father (who had checked in on line, with seats allocated, the night before) being told that, due to some administrative cock up, he, his wife and four children under six years old would all have to sit separately. I think the youngest child (just over 2) got to sit directly in front of her mother. Other than that they were all quite literally rows apart from each other. Being the home of wonderful British customer service, the cabin crew did absolutely nothing to help, didn't try to move passengers about and then shouted at the 2 year old so much she spent the whole flight crying. Nice work BA. And very very unsafe to boot...
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CAA guidelines reccomend that parents and children should be seated near to each other-certainly close enough so that the parent is able to supervise the child-it is on the caa website.
My feelings entirely OverFlare. Reading about your BA flight, well done to my easyJet flight from Bilbao-Stansted recently where the cabin crew did an excellent job getting a mother and her two under sixes on the same row by politely requesting passengers to voluntarily move to other seats.
This safety issue is presumably why easyJet offer free priority boarding to families with children under 10 years old. (We didn't know about this until we told when we got to the check-in desk - glad we didn't pay for the privilege up-front!) Do any other airlines offer this? Just curious.
This safety issue is presumably why easyJet offer free priority boarding to families with children under 10 years old. (We didn't know about this until we told when we got to the check-in desk - glad we didn't pay for the privilege up-front!) Do any other airlines offer this? Just curious.
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I have seen this recently. The problem was that the poor parents had to make their kids comfortable during a protracted wait at the gate. They were all called first but given too little time to gather their brood.
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Also points to what a horribly selfish and misguided society we have become if neither the crew nor the other pax can be bothered to move themselves around to accomodate.
Being a forthright character I have often taken it upon myself to organise by polite request, or cajoling and shaming, both the cabin crew and the other pax to join me in making an appropriate sized space for the family in question.
For those of you out there that can't see the basic humanity in this, never mind the safety, what is wrong with you
Being a forthright character I have often taken it upon myself to organise by polite request, or cajoling and shaming, both the cabin crew and the other pax to join me in making an appropriate sized space for the family in question.
For those of you out there that can't see the basic humanity in this, never mind the safety, what is wrong with you
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Quite some time ago, on a Qantas flight to Hong Kong, a child sat down in the seat beside me and her mother was diagonally across the aisle. I felt quite uncomfortable about this, for the precise reason mentioned earlier - I would have to accept responsibility for this child in the event of an emergency. An FA asked me if I'd move to the seat diagonally across the aisle, so that mother and child could sit together.
I was much relieved and therefore readily agreed.
I was much relieved and therefore readily agreed.
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Here is what you do. You get on board and realise you and you child are seperated. Politely ask the cabin crew if they can help. If they can't or won't help, explain to them that you feel it is in the interest of safety for you and all people on board. If it still does not work let them know your displeasure and sit in your original seats. Keep a close eye and determine when the plane is about to close doors and get the cabin crews attention. Now you demand that you and your child be permitted to leave the airplane unless you sit with your kid. Tell them if they do not you will sue the entire crew including the captain for false imprisonment. A criminal offense by the way. You will definatly get there attention. At that point they can either sit you with your child or offload you, a process that will take at least thirty minutes.
Under normal circumstaces I would never be separated from my child while on an airplane.
7
Under normal circumstaces I would never be separated from my child while on an airplane.
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757, we must be members of the same club! Each and every airline has the opportunity to sit families together. Yet they don't. They want to make money out of it - tough, I ain't going to pay (yet again)! Britannia (TUI), or whoever, you should be ashamed of yourselves!
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Yes this IS an important (and worsening) safety issue which is being completely neglected.
Eagle-eyed I have to agree that unfortunately you missed the point and you have also missed the growing severity of the problem. It is easy to be fooled into thinking that the no seat allocation model and priority for those that wanht to pay for it model has worked ok for some years now, but that would be an incorrect assumption to apply to the current still-changing situation. On a 189 seat 738 the priority boarding queue often appears to be half of the total thesedays. As a habitual late arriver but one of the new hoardes of experienced canny queuers myself, and as a father of young kids once, I can tell you that a family such as the OP doesn't stand a chance at many gates.
As of recently (when the majority of the queue is now likely to become free of charge "priority"), priority boarding is a shameful joke and I seriously believe that Ryanair in particular must now be taken to court for unfairly discriminating against families and others vulnerables in the poorly controlled crowd situation created by their continually changing procedural model. Sadly I am not sure what law could be used for best effect as it is not quite the same as the clear breach of statute when discriminating against disabled.
But unfair discrimination is what this is first and foremost, and unsafe is the secondary effect. The correct solution is easy - we go back to positive discrimination of families with young children first. Sadly some of these locos seem to have an agenda to promote a certain kind of bad citizenship to suit their need for rapid turnaround.
Until Ryanair and others are forced to be better citizens then I am wholly with rmac on this. As BAA and airport police are nowhere to be seen at the gates and abdicate all everyday public order matters to low could care less cost contractors, it seems it is up to us (the rest of us in the queue with some leadership ability) to cause the queue to come to order, and once on board to effect some kind of common sense adjustment in the cabin without getting ourselves accused of disorderly behaviour in the process...
Eagle-eyed I have to agree that unfortunately you missed the point and you have also missed the growing severity of the problem. It is easy to be fooled into thinking that the no seat allocation model and priority for those that wanht to pay for it model has worked ok for some years now, but that would be an incorrect assumption to apply to the current still-changing situation. On a 189 seat 738 the priority boarding queue often appears to be half of the total thesedays. As a habitual late arriver but one of the new hoardes of experienced canny queuers myself, and as a father of young kids once, I can tell you that a family such as the OP doesn't stand a chance at many gates.
As of recently (when the majority of the queue is now likely to become free of charge "priority"), priority boarding is a shameful joke and I seriously believe that Ryanair in particular must now be taken to court for unfairly discriminating against families and others vulnerables in the poorly controlled crowd situation created by their continually changing procedural model. Sadly I am not sure what law could be used for best effect as it is not quite the same as the clear breach of statute when discriminating against disabled.
But unfair discrimination is what this is first and foremost, and unsafe is the secondary effect. The correct solution is easy - we go back to positive discrimination of families with young children first. Sadly some of these locos seem to have an agenda to promote a certain kind of bad citizenship to suit their need for rapid turnaround.
Until Ryanair and others are forced to be better citizens then I am wholly with rmac on this. As BAA and airport police are nowhere to be seen at the gates and abdicate all everyday public order matters to low could care less cost contractors, it seems it is up to us (the rest of us in the queue with some leadership ability) to cause the queue to come to order, and once on board to effect some kind of common sense adjustment in the cabin without getting ourselves accused of disorderly behaviour in the process...
