General Chat

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5391341/Passenger-films-toddlers-eight-hour-tantrum-flight.html


Would not want to be on a plane with this family :-D

Glad I wasn't on that flight - it must have been horrendous!

I wonder if the child had a problem - or the parents?
Most 3 year olds would at least have a nap.

You'd think if there was an issue the parents would have said, and then most people would have "put up with it" more....still that long and no nap....wow...

Rather them than me!

If the child did have a known medical condition, and I know that I'm going to be howled down for this, couldn't the parent(s) have arranged for a mild sedative for the child?

I'm glad that my then six year old and two year old were well behaved when we flew to Australia

Can you imagine that flight if not...no thank you.

If there were an issue for the childs sake you'd think something would have been arranged wouldn't you. Like Allan I'm not saying knock them out but....

More likely precious isn't ever told to sit down and be quiet..

We took a 2 year, 3 year and 7 year old to Italy.
True, a shorter journey, and there were 5 adults - but my sister is terrified of flying, so she had to be 'distracted'.
Our children found other children and talked/played (quietly) with them!!

I've had kids kicking the back of my seat .... bad enough....even kids vomiting seats in front....but nothing like this.

My kids on similar length flights weren't angels but they knew "the look" and when to stop doing what they were doing :-D

I was going to say something about angels and flying, but perhaps I won't :-D :-D

Oh go on.....

It was only something along the lines that if your children were angels then they wouldn't need a plane to fly to various destinations so no one would be aware of them anyway....on the other hand if they were little devils, literally a flight from hell :-0

Definitely, Allan!

Caroline - I too have the 'look'.
My 37 year old said something to me the other day, and I inadvertently gave him the 'look'.
He said 'Sorry auntie Maggie', like a 6 year old :-D

Oh, they're never too old for the look!

Allan the trouble is sometimes they're angels and sometimes they're devils so would that involve them popping in and out fo the plane??

They also learnt very fast that when Mum isn't raising her voice and they're being little buggers they better worry.....quiet isn't good if you're being naughty :-D

Oh!
I went to NZ in last November and there was one of those horrors on our flight too!
The family got on the plane at Dubai .

The child, aged about 4yrs, started screaming, took off his seat belt and stood on his seat demanding to go to the toilet just as we were taking off.!
The flight attendants were also already seated and told the parents to make him sit down.

The child went berserk!
His parents completely ignored the boy and left their young teenage daughter ( aged about 13 or 14yrs) to handle it?
The older sister had to forcefully pin him to his seat whilst the father sat next to him doing nothing.
The whole family dynamics were really odd.
Parents and 5 children yet the young girl was the only person in the group who seemed to speak English.


Once we were in flight, he was taken to the toilet but, he continued to scream and kick out and for another 2 hours before he finally fell asleep.
Seventeen and half hour flight!

I was dreading the family getting back on that plane after refuelling in Melbourne but, thankfully, it must have been their destination because they didn't come back on board

Sounds awful! That's definitely a case of bad (or lack of) parenting.

Mind you if you were those parents this would be one of the cases where you'd refuse to pay extra to book seats next to each other and let someone else on the plane put up with your kids :-D

To be fair it's possible the child could be Autistic which prompted the continual meltdown because of sensory overload.
It did say the child had a disability although it wasn't specified which kind.

However the parents seemed to have little idea how to control the situation & it beggars belief that other measures to calm the child wasn't put in place, such as a mild prescribed sedative as a last resort, or downloaded content on his Ipad to start with. Maybe they should have tried a shorter flight first to gauge how he could cope.
Either way they knew he had an obsession with his Ipad and internet, and must of seen him melt down before this as they must have used this device to calm him before.

Also filming someone else's child & putting it in the public domain is so wrong, no matter how upset you feel. It's no wonder the parents don't sue.

It was awful Caroline.
If it wasn't for the young girl who did all the interpreting, no one would ever have known why the child was kicking out.

They did have seats together but, there were 7 of them in all.
4 in extra leg room seats with 3 ( horror, sister and father) seated in the row behind.

They were Asian Muslim ( I have no issues with this at all) but, the father's behaviour for the first few hours was particularly odd.
He too behaved like an excited child and completely ignored his own kids.

He was also wearing a strange looking suit, shirt and tie combo, then slept in it for the remainder of the flight
If only you could have seen the crumpled mess he was in when we arrived at Melbourne more than 17hrs later. LOL

Edit:
I fully agree with Mildred

However, the child on our flight was definitely just a terror

Did he really have issues though or is that just being said now to try and excuse the behaviour? We'll never know but as others have said either have ways of dealing with it if possible or at least tell everyone up front....there's been stories where parents have paid for everyones headphones up front and apologized as it's a baby first flight as they expect screams. It seems the parents didn't apologize at the time.....

I would imagine for a child to be crying & being disruptive for 8 hours solid it would be more than just bad behavior.

Most children of that age would wear themselves out & fall asleep after a while. Not always the case when a child has a condition such as ASD or ADHD. or even a mixture of both.

Maybe but I've seen kids on sugar highs go for hours and sometimes they can be too tired to rest if that makes sense.

Talking to OH last night and he reminded me exactly why the monster on our flight had tantrums.

It wasn't that he needed to use the toilet but, he wanted to play with the water dispenser sited next to the toilet door.
He had been having fun, pressing the button and letting the water drain away when the fasten seat belts sign came on.

He went berserk because he was removed from his game and put into his seat.

The screaming went on until his sister took him back to the dispenser once the seatbelt sign was turned off.
For about an hour she took him up and down the aircraft and let him play with every dispenser on the plane!
They had to return to their seats when the flight attendants came through with drinks trollies.... he and his sister were blocking the aisles.

Dragged back to his at his seat, he went rigid and kicked off again and it lasted for about 2hours.
2 other passengers in the same row had had enough and found vacant seats further up the plane

His mother finally took the boy into the front row and he eventually fell asleep in her lap
She sat unmoving with the sleeping boy for about 10hrs straight whilst daddy lifted the armrests of the vacated seats, stretched out .