BUNCH OF FLY BABIES
Plane app to avoid kids’ seats
An airline is offering flyers a new seating option — with or without a screaming baby.
Japan Airlines launched a new “baby mapper” tool this week, which allows online ticket bookers to see where babies will be sitting in the cabin before choosing a seat.
The app will mark the kids’ seats with a cute baby face icon — and it will be left to customers to decide if they want to take the chance.
“Passengers traveling with children between 8 days and 2 years old who select their seats on the JAL website will have a child icon displayed on their seats on the seat selection screen,” the airline’s site reads. “This lets other passengers know a child may be sitting there.”
But the high-altitude baby-shaming plan did not sit will with some moms in New York. “Are you serious? This is the world we live in now?” said fuming mother of two Kristina Davis, 25, of Canarsie, who has a 9
month-old boy named Steven and a 3year-old girl named Madeline. “I feel like technology is supposed to bring us together, but all it does is drive us apart.”
Mom oof three Stephanie Orel, 32, said the feature made her feel “singled out.”
“It’s hard enough flying with young kids, because the whole time you’re worried about disturbing the passengers around you,” Orel said. “But you also tend to think that people are understanding because they were babies once themselves.”
Other flyers, however, hailed the idea of being able to avoid hours of screaming children just feet away.
“Thank you, @JAL_Official_jp for [warning] me about where babies plan to scream and yell during a 13
hour trip,” frequent flyer Rahat Ahmed tweeted, adding, “This really ought to be mandatory across the board.”
Ahmed, a Brooklyn-based venture capitalist, also asked Qatar Airways to “please take note,” griping that he was stuck sitting next to three “screaming babies” on his flight from New York to Doha, Qatar, earlier this month.
One mom, Roseline Gerard, 31, understood people’s complaints about kids on flights. But she said that before getting too mad at the crying child a few seats over, try a little TLC.
“Instead of distancing yourself from the baby, why not practice some humanity and see if there’s anything you can do to help the mom? Because whatever discomfort you feel, trust me, the mom’s having it 100 times worse,” Gerard said.