Jetiquette Podcast:Denied Boarding, Overhead Bins, and Crying Babies!
by The Sky Steward
Filed under Airline Service, Latest Posts, Show Info
PODCAST: The airline industry provides more drama than Y&R and Bold and the Beautiful (TV soap operas) combined! Did you hear about the United Airlines passenger with a first class ticket that was denied boarding because of his track suit attire? The Sky Steward discusses this and much more on this edition of Jetiquette with his co-host and resident frequent flier, “Margery” (No last name you know, like Cher or Madonna)
There is no hiding from The Sky Steward! He’s always peeking into the first class cabins of speeding jetliners or hiding in dark corners of First Class Lounges of major airports, so be sure you don’t get on his Jetiquette Faux Pas list 
Enjoy Your Flight
Wonderful podcast…loved the humor and info especially loved the crying baby and cat sounds. You are so talented!!!
Crewmembers are required to carry a lot of stuff, and it’s stuff that won’t do any good for pax if it’s in cargo. You don’t want a situation where crewmembers are exiting the secured area and waiting at baggage claim for bags so that they can re-check the bags, re-enter security and get to their next aircraft. Talk about slowing down turn times! It’s easy to say that crewmembers should be good role models vis-a-vis packing but it’s apples and oranges. I agree that a lot of FAs and pilots could bring less, no doubt. But the same rules don’t apply to pax and crewmembers.
I suspected, when I heard the story about the man denied boarding in first class due to his track suit, that the agent mistakenly thought the man was a non-rev, and, come to find out, this is the case. Non-revs are not allowed in first (and often not in coach) dressed that way. The gate agent just got confused between non-rev standby and rev pax standing by for first. It’s true, as Gailen says, that you can tell the non-revs because they’re still the best-dressed on the plane.
The 2yo thrown off the SW flight….If he is 2, his mom was supposed to have been required to purchase a seat for him. I see agents turn a blind eye to this stuff way too often. If mom had any sense at all she’d realize that she should have brought his safety seat to strap into his seat and then strapped him into the safety seat. In his familiar safety seat he would have been not just a lot safer but a lot happier too, because he’s used to that. Yes, he could have thrown a tantrum, but it’s harder to have a back-arching, thrashing, kicking tantrum in a safety seat. I can almost guarantee you that this child was not only NOT strapped into a safety seat, he was probably not securely under a seatbelt either. A normal 2yo body just can’t be securely strapped into a normal seat using the standard seatbelt; it’s just how they’re configured. That’s WHY they invented safety seats. He was probably on his mother’s lap, WHERE HE DOESN’T BELONG, BY LAW, and he wanted down and threw a tantrum to get down off her lap. The law is, every ticketed pax has to be securely strapped in before the plane begins moving. He should, by law, have been securely strapped in at that moment. I remember a situation not too long ago where a little girl was thrown off a plane in Florida when she was having a tantrum. But the real reason she was thrown off is not that she was having a tantrum; it’s that her tantrum prevented her from being STRAPPED IN, and that’s against the law. I’m ready for EVERYONE, of EVERY age, to be required to have their own seat and for kids under a certain (relatively high weight) to be required to be strapped into a safety seat. Even — especially — newborns.
FYI here is a newspaper article that fills out the story.
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES APOLOGIZES, REIMBURSES SAN JOSE MOM TOSSED FROM A FLIGHT WITH CRANKY 2-YR-OLD
By Lisa Fernandez
lfernandez@mercurynews.com
Pamela Root’s 2-year-old son was screaming for the Southwest Airlines plane to “Go! Plane! Go!”
“I want Daddy!” Adam shouted. Over and over again.
Despite her embarrassment, the stay-at-home San Jose mom remained confident that once the plane took off and she fed him, Adam would calm down and take a nap — just as he had on the half-dozen other plane rides with Mom.
The flight crew wasn’t willing to find out.
Root and her son, Adam, were on their way home to San Jose when they were kicked off Monday’s Southwest Flight 637.
“I left, rather embarrassed,” Root said Thursday. “Then, I was so mad, I almost cried.”
With her luggage heading back home without her, Root was stuck in Amarillo, Texas, and forced to buy a portable crib and diapers and stay another night with her parents. Still fuming, she wants Southwest to apologize and compensate her for the flight and things she bought. Adam’s father, Mike Root, a software engineer at Symantec, who was waiting for them in San Jose, is also livid.
Southwest, with its fun and family-friendly reputation, immediately began looking into the matter on Thursday at the request of the Mercury News. Spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said it’s “very rare” to ask someone to leave a flight, and especially “unusual” to remove a crying child.
Root, 38, said she thought she had a foolproof flying routine with her son. Wait until takeoff to feed Adam so his ears wouldn’t hurt.
Then get him to take a nap on the flight. The routine always made him a bit cranky but never out of control, she said. There was always the bag of trucks and books about trucks for a backup.
Monday, Adam was more than a little cranky. There were annoyed looks from fellow passengers, Root said. Then the captain made a surprise announcement: The plane would return to the gate because of a “passenger issue.” At first, she dreaded what sounded like a delay. Then, she discovered the passenger was Adam. Suddenly, they were being escorted off the plane by an attendant who told Root something to the effect of: “We just can’t tolerate that for two hours.”
“He’ll be fine once we take off,” Root remembers insisting.
“We’ve heard that before,” the flight attendant told Root.
Like most other airlines, Southwest gives its flight attendants discretion in determining what constitutes a “safe and comfortable” flight, McInnis said. And they give attendants leeway in figuring out how to “resolve” situations.
Other airlines have similar rules. United Airlines spokeswoman Sarah Massier said United has three pages of what they call “right-of-refusal” reasons. “But no,” Massier said. “We don’t have a policy on crying children.”
Tim Smith, spokesman for American Airlines, said it is “extremely rare” for the carrier to deny boarding to a disruptive child — “far more rare than problems with disruptive adults, for sure.”
In June 2008, American Eagle removed a 2-year-old autistic boy and his mother from a flight in North Carolina because of a crying fit.
This past weekend I was in DFW and heard an overhead announcement.
“We have a very full flight today. We will check bags for you free here at the gate to expedite things.”
And I thought to myself if I was someone who had paid a fee to check my bags, I’d be unhappy to hear that announcement. And — next time — I would certainly lug my bags with me, knowing they’d be checked for free.
Something is wrong with this arrangement.
Margery,
I want some more details and pics that you took with one of your favorite AAgents!
I will do one better, I will get said favorite agent on the show. I want the world to hear what a superior customer service person has to say!
First I need to get my voice back. (I have the Swine Cold)