Air travel with a baby is only for the brave. I know parents who didn’t attempt it until their kids were old enough to be seated at the other end of the plane. It doesn’t matter how you fly: coach, first class, private jet — being trapped in a confined space with an infant is no fun.
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Mom Arielle Noa Charnas thought she was doing the right thing by booking first-class seats for herself, her husband and their daughter Ruby for their Delta Airlines flight from New York to LA last week. It was the first time they’d taken Ruby on a plane, so they wanted to make the experience as stress-free as possible. Hence shelling out for the best seats. More space, more assistance… and a glass of bubbly on hand to take the edge off if things get really fraught.
Alas, little Ruby had other ideas. “I had a screaming, crying, sleepy baby who was so overwhelmed that she couldn’t fall asleep,” Charnas wrote on Instagram. The fashion blogger revealed that some of her fellow first-class passengers complained (as well as giving her the eye roll and head shake) to the extent that a flight attendant asked the family to move to the back of the plane — after only 10 minutes.
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We’ve all had to deal with eye rolls and annoyed looks from other people (and not just on an airplane). It’s hardly surprising that people were pissed about having a screaming baby in the row behind them. Crying babies on planes are annoying as hell. But it’s unlikely that Ruby would have screamed all the way from New York to LA. If the flight attendant had done her job properly, she would have done her best to placate the angry folk and helped Charnas figure out ways to calm the baby down. Ordering them to the back of the plane only minutes into the flight was lazy and patronizing and screws the passengers who didn’t have the money to fly first class.
Money may be able to buy you the best seat in the house, but it sure can’t buy you compassion and tolerance.
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