In October 2010, my family and I were booked for a trip to the United States. Nothing fancy mind you. Just some time with parents and at the beach. Now flights leaving from Tbilisi to the West always leave early in the morning - around 4am, meaning that you have to arrive at the airport around 2am to check your bags and go through passport control, security, etc.. The problem with planes leaving at this time is that I never want to sleep before the flight for fear of oversleeping and missing the flight all together. On the same token, I didn’t want to keep my children awake all night and allowed them to sleep so that they could rest before the flight (and let them terrorize the other passengers).
The time eventually arrives to get ready to leave and we wake and get the children ready. No problem. Catch the taxi to the airport. No problem. Check in bags. No problem. Make to the security check line. Slight problem.
Remember, now, it’s 3:30 am and the 5 year old boy Nicholas is tired, confused and well….rather a little cranky. Not misbehaving terribly mind you, but just enough to rile my wife who kept hissing at him to behave as he wants to run around the airport. But again, nothing major.
So we make it past through the security check and then are waiting in the lounge area. Nicholas is now getting excited to board plane.
“Not now Nick, but soon. Why don’t you play with your toys while we are waiting?” I tried to encourage him. Reluctantly, he does. Wanders over to a seat and looks at his bag while we go through ours.
“Passports? Check!”
“Diapers? Check!”
“Baby bottles? Check!”
“Snacks? Check!” (snickers – nothing more)
“What’s this? Empty soda bottle? Oh yeah, no liquid on the planes anymore. Freakin regulations….” (grumble)
“Magazines? Check!”
“Huh?! Play dough? Did someone pack play dough? Without the box? Why is this here?”
Etc. etc. etc.
Now in the “old days,” airlines used to announce and allow those with children and those who need assistance to board the plane first as they will require more time and space to get settled. It is important to explain to you “why” this is. Even if you don’t have children, you have seen those who do and can understand this. You never see a family calmly board the plane, look at their tickets, take their place, buckle up and calmly wait for the plane to take off. It NEVER happens. Instead, everything they’ve packed and re-packed in the airport into those children’s backpacks and baby bags MUST come out immediately once finding your area – not seat – but “area” as you will initially occupy more than one space on the plane (i.e. your seat, the neighbors seat, the corridor, the washroom, the galley, and sometime the cockpit – ANY free space you see, you will claim as yours). The reason why this is (and I hope you are paying attention as there will be a test on this later on) is because you cannot touch your bags for the first and last twenty minutes of the flight as the plane ascends and descends and it is only THIS period of time that your children have decided that they MUST whatever is in their bag. This can be snacks, toys, books, etc. all of which are promptly removed (or more accurately “dumped”) from the bag onto a seat for the child to pick and choose which ones are necessary for this time period and which ones are to be returned to the bag. Basically, even the most dignified and calm of families who fly at 3:50 am bear a strong resemblance to worn torn refugees fleeing their country, squatting in the first area they see and setting up some sort of “sky camp.” THUS, the need to allow passengers with children or who need assistance must board first. This is very decent and actually very logical, which obviously means that they airlines have abandoned this policy.
Evidently, many airlines have decided to do away with most anything decent and logical for reasons unbeknown to me. The only reason I can imagine is that those without children have complained about preferential treatment and being forced to wait in the waiting area or not being able to place their bag near them in the overhead. IF this supposition is correct, I wonder how they now feel about sitting near a family that places their bags on them while rummaging looking for the special toy, having the take off delayed even longer or having the disembark from the plane delayed as they now have forced the family to place their carry ons in various overhead bins scattered throughout the plane. Fun now?
Yet, I digress… as we are going through thing and getting everything organized, we look up and realize that the plane has boarded and we are one of the last people there in the waiting lounge.
PANIC TIME
Yelling at each other, everyone jumped up and gathered their things, dashed over provided tickets and passports, ran onto the gangway to get to plane, and as we are running down I thought of the movie “Home Alone” where the parents are in the airport and as we were running to the plane, did a quick head count to discover that Nicholas was NOT with us.
“Where’s Nick?” I frantically ask my wife
Stopping dead in her tracks with panic in her eyes “I don’t know. I thought he was with us”
“Did he make it before us and get on the plane already?”
“Find him NOW!”
We rushed to the door of the plane and asked the stewardess if a little boy has gotten on the plane already (trust me, with Nicholas this would not be a surprise). He hadn’t. Damn! “He must still be in the airport!” So we all run back up the gangway and into the airport to spread out looking for Nicholas.
We eventually found him sitting calmly, half asleep watching (ironically) our plane board and prepare for takeoff. So we grab him and take off back down the gangway.
Now referring to the above paragraphs about getting settled on a plane with children, let me come to our situation. We were the last ones on the plane and are now trying to get settled with children ranging from 15 to 6 months.
“Ok, you have your music player…great! Sit down. You don’t have your sweatshirt? I told you it was going to be cold on the plane. Too bad. Sit down. You can ask the stewardess for a blanket once we are in the air” Anyone over the age of six will have to wait before taking things from the overhead.
“Nick you have your toys? Cool” putting the bag in the overhead “George needs a bottle now…”
“Dad, this is the Mickey Mouse toy” Nicholas informs me.
“Yes, I see that” half paying attention while rummaging through another child’s bag
“I need the Donald Duck toy”
“What?...Huh?...Nick, you pulled that toy out yourself and I just put your bag in the overhead. The one over there. I need to find George’s bottle now”
Now the steward comes over.
“Sir sit down. We need to close the cabin doors”
“I know, one moment please the baby is crying and I need to get the bottle out of the bag and we have an issue with Mickey Mouse”
“Sir,sit down now. We are waiting for you.”
“yes, I know, but…”
“SIT DOWN NOW”
Now this was on Lufthansa and I will unabashedly state that if you have the opportunity to fly with them…don’t. Ever. Now, I might have actually just sat down if he had offered to help, be more productive, spoken more sympathetically or simply shut his “pie hole” and just glared at me, but what added insult to injury was when he looked at the other passengers who began to protest his treatment of us and justified his behavior and said
“What do you expect? We’re German” and walked off.
What?!! That set international politics back 60 years in my mind. So much for the “forgive, forget and move on” mentality. At first I wanted to counter with a “oh yeah Hans, well let’s talk about the two world wars that you started. How far did that attitude go then?” discussion, but honestly, I was shell shocked by what he said.
With the support of my fellow passengers, I am proud to say that I delayed the flight another 15 minutes more by ignoring him and getting the bottle and getting Nicholas comfortable. HAH! That will teach them to rethink abandoning “the children first policy!”
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