Casual Conversation

Parents are mortified when their kids are screaming on a flight. They didn't want this either.

A good pair of earplugs (e.g. loop) can help tremendously.

It seems like a complete no brainer to me, I would choose it every time and pay extra for it

This part obviously isn't true, or else you would have paid for First or Business class. There's no guarantee that the expensive seats are kid-free, but it's much more likely. They'll give you free booze, too.

I have kids and when I took them on trips when they were little, I would book the most direct option. I didn't consider the option where I could inconvenience the most entitled people.

I'll never get why people get so worked up by babies crying on airplanes. The kids parents are just trying to get somewhere, same as everyone else. The plane is not your bedroom, or office, theater, or library. You know what you're getting into when you board. You're going to be in close quarters with strangers. Some of them might be kids that cry, some might be so old or weak that they have trouble stuffing their oversized carry on into the overhead bin. The difference is the weak person could have chosen to check the bag. Can you tell what my flying pet annoyance is? You just never know what you're gonna get.

Like someone already said, the airlines don't do it bc there's no money in it.

Disclaimer: I may or may not be on a 36h day with only an hour of sleep right now

Lemme guess: kids?

Also to answer your question https://www.alternativeairlines.com/child-free-flights . No child-free flights, but child-free zones on flights.

All the people here talking about "just use headphones with ANC" haven't been a seat or two away from a crying child. It's not the child's fault and often not that of the parents (they have to travel too), but having adults-only flights would be amazing. I'd pay extra too to be on a long-haul flight without kids. Some adults do act like kids too, but it's not possible to ban them.

And to the people acting mortified and all high and mighty: there are adults only places. Are you going to get offended about those too? The proposal isn't to ban kids from all flights. It's to offer some flights without kids.

I never understood why people jump on planes without noise canceling headphones and expect to be sleeping while sitting in a uncomfortable chair.

You can choose to bring noise canceling headphones but you choose not to. The infant can't choose.

There's a spectrum, you can always charter a jet, and only allow other adults to join you on the charter. But that's expensive.

As you pull in more and more strangers, you have to accept a broader spectrum of people's lifestyles, including they need to move children.

From an airline perspective, it wouldn't be a good look if you were excluding parents, so it would be a PR nightmare. Most people belong to families, even if they don't have kids themselves, so a bad experience any member of their family had could reduce the amount of popularity your airline enjoy

However, it would be nice if airlines said, the back of the plane is the safest for children, which statistically it is, so children are only allowed to sit in the last 10 rows of the flight. That would be amazing

Honestly, I will never wrap my head around how people can happily bring infants on any flight.

Parents want and need to travel too, and they can't just abandon their babies at home and feel bad leaving them with other relatives. For overseas trips your only alternative to flying is a weeklong boat trip, and parents would need to make preparations for diapers and a whole lot of other things just to make this trip.

Babies and small children will make noise on buses, planes, cars, boats and trains or wherever they are. They don't save it for a specific moment but it's understandable they get stressed when riding something for the first time. You and I were babies at some point.

I would choose it every time and pay extra for it.

For domestic/continental travel, ride a train and book a solo sleeper car.

For flying, well... book a private charter flight and invite only adults/no one for guaranteed peace and quiet.

Not enough demand. Most people aren't going to pay extra for a child free flight, especially if it's a short flight. Most people will easily put up with a screaming child for a two hour flight if they can save several hundred dollars that they don't have anyway.

They exist. They're called private jets.

Like someone already said: Good pair of earbuds do wonders. Get the noice cancelling ones and you’re good to go.

Noisy kids (or noisy people in general) will continue to exist and as long as you use planes or public transport you have to deal with them.

Shoutout to every jackass who FaceTimes in a train.

Various adults-only flights (and I think even an airline, but I might be mistaken) did exist. You could argue about 9/11 and later financial troubles factoring into their demise, but they're usually more expensive and less frequent/convenient and thus are not popular.

Second, if you can afford to fly enough that this is a regular occurrence, get noise-canceling headphones.

Third, not all people who are traveling with small children are doing it because they want to: funerals, work relocation, etc. are a thing that are impractical to do via other modes of transportation. If my work and the internet were good enough, I'd love to just boat everywhere out of my current country, but that's not going to happen (although I don't have kids, so it wouldn't matter for this post, I suppose).

Feel free to cross post to !parenting@lemmy.world for additional opinions

Did Australia to London, plane full of screaming babies. Slept 16 of the 24 hours flight time.

What’s my secret? Anti-psychotics.

Grow up. You think it’s fun for us when our kids flip out? What are we supposed to do, hit them so you don’t get a little bit disturbed?

Grow the fuck up and realize this world isn’t just you.

Damn, this conversation didn't stay casual.

But, in fairness, your post text was pretty aggressive for a casual conversation.

But, as people have already said, there ain't no such because nobody is/was willing to pony up often enough.

Besides, airplanes aren't sleeping berths. That part of your premise is flawed. It's okay to sleep on flights, but it isn't part of the package. There's no laying down, and no promise made that any flight will be quiet enough for any given individual to sleep, babies and kids or not.

Your expectations of flying being geared towards sleep just aren't realistic. It never has been, barring very limited occasions here and there.

Tbh, you can't even have a realistic expectation of adults being quiet enough for everyone's sleep needs, even if everyone was trying to sleep. Snoring, farting, groans and creaks. Someone would be unable to sleep.

Babies in particular are really hard to ignore for sure, their cries are supposedly evolved to alarm adults into action. Even small kids crying and screaming can cut through a lot. But that's life. Mass transit always has a risk of that kind of event because even the most stable and comfortable vehicles can't guarantee a child won't be bothered enough for occasional fits.

There's no current airlines offering such, not that a quick search could find (and I don't doubt you had already done so). So you're just as screwed as anyone on a bus, train, or a family road trip.

If you want advice on ways to filter out baby screams, let me know. I've done enough time around sick infants to have sorta found ways to avoid being upset by it, which means I can half doze through short crying spells. It's all about riding the response it causes and letting it go while doing some meditation and breath control. Mix in a little self-programming under a controlled setting, and you can eventually mostly tune it out.

The closest thing to that I’ve experienced is flying Virgin. When I boarded they were playing downtempo house music and no kids in sight