Poor FA experience - flying with an 18month old

[bigal1990]

Hi AusFF - looking for views/tips/opinions on this.

I had to fly last minute to North America last week with my wife and 18 month old son due to a family emergency. We booked 24hours prior and were lucky to get two business seats to LAX with Virgin Australia points. We were seated in 1D and 1F

On boarding everything was fine, but rapidly detioriated due to behaviour of one flight attendant. Our son does not cry that much but was definitely letting out a few yells when he had enough of sitting in the seat or wanted to escape up the aisle for walk.

The summary of our experience with the FA was:
1) The FA in question kept coming up to us telling us that our son couldn’t make noise and we needed to keep him quiet
2) kept making comments that we should have given him Benadryl like every other parent does before a flight
3) started coming up to our seats and shushing aggressively to our son telling him directly he needs to be quiet (he’s 18 months old…..)
4) finally told us I needed to take him somewhere else because we were jeapordising flight safety as the crew wouldn’t be able to sleep.

At this point my wife was in tears, so I took my son up the back of economy where thankfully another much kinder flight attendant let me use a spare row for a while.

At this point, the flight attendants rotated through a break and we had a very nice flight attendant for the rest of the flight. And our son finally went to sleep for the last few hours .

I put in a complaint to united and got offered a USD50 voucher.

Am I right to think that this is very poor customer service? Our son was making a bit of noise but it definitely wasn’t that bad, I have seen much worse on a lot more flights.

 

[Cynicor]

That’s insane. The media would love that, esp as you didn’t pay cash for the seats.

 

[blackcat20]

It's such a hard age to travel with. Our 18 month boy was similar, he did not want to be confined to a seat and certainly let us know. But despite being in F, we didn't have a single issue with the crew, they were all very lovely about it.
Sounds like you got an FA having a bad day.

 

[odysseus]

Definitely bad service.

But various forms of bad service are not uncommon with US flight attendants, so you're not likely to get much beyond what you have. (Remember the David Dao incident? And it's not the only time.) There are of course many good crew as well, not saying it's normal. Just that it's unfortunately not uncommon. And there have been a lot worse outcomes - I would say it's fortunate you took the child to the back, as that safety and request argument has - sadly - escalated to much worse when not complied with.

 

[Freq Flier 2013]

It’s very rude of the flight attendant to say such things to you. The compensation is definitely not high enough.

 

[LCC]

Is it possible one of the nearby passengers had put in a complaint/made comment to the said flight attendant about your son's behaviour? I will put my hand up and say I would be getting annoyed if I had paid to be in business class and a small child nearby was a) making yelling noises and especially b) running down the aisle. But I understand it is difficult traveling with a restless infant and the attendant should have handled it a little more diplomatically.

 

[bigal1990]

Is it possible one of the nearby passengers had put in a complaint/made comment to the said flight attendant about your son's behaviour? I will put my hand up and say I would be getting annoyed if I had paid to be in business class and a small child nearby was a) making yelling noises and especially b) running down the aisle. But I understand it is difficult traveling with a restless infant and the attendant should have handled it a little more diplomatically.

To be clear we were not letting our child run down the aisle. But yes one passenger made it made it quite clear she was un-happy. To be fair the flight departs at 9:30am so I don’t think anyone is too desperate to sleep, and the noise would’ve easily been silenced by a pair of noise-cancelling headphone.

 

[muppet]

It definitely sounds like a rude FA …. but ‘in tears’ for being ‘shushed’ …

$50 seems fair for rudeness. You got to your destination, in your booked travel class, for a heavily discounted rate - any higher and UA is pretty much paying you to fly, for what? a ‘shush’?

Parents can also be immune to their little precious’s noises (which you’ve described as a ’yell’)….

 

[bigal1990]

It definitely sounds like a rude FA …. but ‘in tears’ for being ‘shushed’ …

$50 seems fair for rudeness. You got to your destination, in your booked travel class, for a heavily discounted rate - any higher and UA is pretty much paying you to fly, for what? a ‘shush’?

Parents can also be immune to their little precious’s noises (which you’ve described as a ’yell’)….

Just ‘being shushed’ is a slimmed down view of what was going on. Regarding the tears, all in all a very stressful situation, exacerbated by the FA, maybe you didn’t read the ‘family emergency’ in my OP.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

To be clear we were not letting our child run down the aisle. But yes one passenger made it made it quite clear she was un-happy. To be fair the flight departs at 9:30am so I don’t think anyone is too desperate to sleep, and the noise would’ve easily been silenced by a pair of noise-cancelling headphone.

Doesn’t sound like this was handled particularly well. Babies are perfectly entitled to be in any class in the aircraft, and they cry. That’s normal. The only thing other passengers should be entitled to expect is that parents try and minimise the noise, if possible. (As opposed to parents who don’t care, or make no attempt to resolve the situation. Like parents allowing their kids to listen to ipads without headphones!)

However I would add that it’s perhaps an unfair projection to assume how people should use their time on a flight, or that people may not want to sleep at 930. Everyone uses flights differently, and those that want to sleep are also perfectly entitled to do so. Some pax would have been at the airport at 630 for a 930 departure, so up many hours before that potentially.

 

[muppet]

Just ‘being shushed’ is a slimmed down view of what was going on. Regarding the tears, all in all a very stressful situation, exacerbated by the FA, maybe you didn’t read the ‘family emergency’ in my OP.

Fair enough and noted, so perhaps the family emergency and other stressors were actually the cause of why everything felt so bad, rather than the rudeness of the FA?

 

[andye]

I definitely think it's wrong to push (dubious) medication advice.
Some small children react well to sedatives, others do worse and I can quite understand parents who don't want to

 

[jakeseven7]

Sounds like typical United service to me sadly!

 

[Katie]

A friend experienced similar unfriendly service from a UA FA on a flight between the US and EU, in Business.
My friend was sitting with her wife and chatting, and this one FA in their cabin kept telling them to be quiet and stop disturbing other passengers. No other FA asked them to be quiet. I can't remember much more of her story, but she felt targetted and that if she had a husband instead of a wife felt that they would not have been told to be quiet.
I think my friend's sister has status with UA and called them and had a tanty about their treatment. Not sure if any compensation/solace was offered.