A US couple with four young children were removed from a flight after attempting to fly with only three tickets.
The Fickes family had planned to sit one of their 20-month-old twins with their three-year-old son, who they had a bought a ticket for, and hold the other twin and their eight-month-old baby on their laps.
Jason and Kathy Fickes managed to pass the ticket desk and get through security screenings with their four young children before boarding the US Airways flight from Charlotte to Chicago, where they were planning to meet relatives for Christmas. Once they were on board a flight attendant told them they were not allowed to travel because there were not enough oxygen masks for the family.
Mrs Fickes said the plane was held up for 40 or 50 minutes as the airline tried to accommodate the family. "I felt we were discriminated against because we had too many children in their eyes," she told ABC 7 News. They were eventually asked to leave the plane despite another passenger offering to buy the family another ticket.
The incident was a result of confusion on the airline's website, where it is only possible to buy tickets for children over the age of two.
However, on another page it gives the option to select how many infants will be travelling, with each child only able to share a seat with an passenger aged over 18.
Federal regulations also demand that there must be an oxygen mask for each passenger. “The safety regulations are such that you have to have one child per one adult," a US airways spokeswoman said. The Fickes family were refunded their tickets.
From an Australian perspective if this scenario was to happen here, the issue is that a 3 year old cannot be responsible for having an infant on his lap as a person has to be 15 and over. The only exception is if the parent of the child is under 15 & yes, it has happened. :shock:
As this family only had 2 adults, they were only permitted nurse 2 infants so they should have bought 4 tickets for the 6 of them. I think they're just getting hung up on semantics saying the system wouldn't allow them to book a seat for the infant - easy just book one of the infants as a child. They could then seat the infant in an appropriate restraint on the seat that has been paid for.
I don't know whether in the US they physically want an adult (18 & over in the US according the above article) nursing the infant on their lap or if a parent travelling alone with two infants can purchase a seat for the 2nd infant & that's acceptable.
There was a recent scenario in Oz where a couple were travelling BNE/SYD/HKG/ISB with infant quads plus the grandmother of the babies & as they were one adult short, they had purchased a ticket for one of the infants who was in the appropriate child restraint in the seat that had been paid for.
On QF 767's & 737's in Australia there is one spare oxygen mask per row so there cannot be anymore than 4 pax in say 37DEF or 3 pax in 23JK on a 767, no more than 4 pax in 16ABC or 16DEF on a 737. I understand that on the A330 where there are two bassinets on the centre bulkhead ie DEFG there 6 oxygen masks so 2 infants can be in that same row.
If a flight is not busy & a middle seat can be blocked off then a couple with 2 infants could sit in the same row, however if the flight is totally full they would have to have opposite aisle seats.
For
domestic travel in the US or Australia it is not a requirement to purchase a ticket for a infant under two (excluding the above scenario of course). For international travel infants must be pay 10% of the airfare despite the fact they don't occupy a seat.
