Naturally, everyone should have heard this before, but there was a recent Tiktok post, where in my opinion, an obnoxious, rich, American, sitting in first class, bemoans the fact that at times people ask her to swap seats in order to be by their children or families?
Really? In first class? And that’s why I did not really take this so seriously, as it seemed that Ms Peters, was merely rubbing it in, that she had enough dosh to afford first class to begin with.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/influencer-applauded-refusing-swap-seats-124505416.html
At the time, the above video had over 900,000 views, with the blogger, an Audrey Peters, toasting the camera with a glass of champagne or Sekt. Her caption read:
“when a family asks me to switch seats on the plane so they can sit together”, followed by a raised eyebrow emoji.
The video now has over 175,000 likes; so apparently she has struck a nerve somewhere.
But I take her point.
But just how would this work, if there was ever to be be flights for “adults” and flights for “families?
Several observations:
- At times, this is exactly what we have already, where flights at school holidays are almost exclusively for families.
- What if you booked only for adults, and then later added children? Would they be booted off?
- Would there be a very strict vetting process, presumably based on passports, so that the age restrictions would be stuck to?
Since I started to do this post, I’ve come across an unbelievable amount of websites, blogs, rants, deranged anger, etc – all about this type of topic. And it is always divided into two parts:
- I hate kids!
- You don’t have children!
You’d think in this day and age, we could have some form of tolerance – nope!
So a solution; let there be a list of passengers with their ages, that is constantly updated, with seat locations, so those in Category 1 (above), can choose seats / flights.
Secondly, let the airlines have completely segregated flights, where there are indeed, age restrictions – one for families (and children), the other for adults, and let the market work.
I know many would not want this, but I’d believe the two above options would still be in the minority of flights, and hence the vast majority of travel would still be what we have presently.
CB