Should this woman be complaining?

LeftBase

Saw this story recently on the net. Tried to link it but didnt work :

Hi everyone I am just back from Ireland from having a weekend over there with family and when returning last night flying from Belfast International with """"" EASYJET"""""".

We get to the gate showing ower boarding passes and they say to me what age is your son and i said 2 today is he, well you can stand in the corner just now to i phone EASYJET you will have to pay £65.99 for a seat for him.
Which the money isnt a problem it was the way they treated us i said he has down syndrome and he has had heart surgery in the past and he cant possiably sit in a seat himself.

They said by law your son has to sit himself for taking off and landing the plane if you dont allow this he CANNOT FLY.
You will have to stay in airport tonight until we get confirmation for him to fly.

So after a while of trying to tell them his problems they were not really interseted we allowed this so we got on the plane and sat him in a seat himself liked they asked.
He was not safe flopping forward and the CABIN MANAGER came up to me and said oh your son is to small to sit on that seat himself can he be srapped to you please.

We said to him we have just been told at the gate when we were pulled to one side he has to sit on a seat himself by LAW and made us pay for the seat and your telling me to strap him to me TOTALLY CONTRADICTING HIMSELF.

He said ive just dug a whole for myself have,nt i and we said yes you sure
have. Then he said should your son be travelling if he has had heart surgery trying to belittle me once again and I replied he has had the all clear to fly by his heart consultant so dont try that one.
WE TOLD EVERYONE HE HAD DOWN SYNDROME AND HIS TONE OF HIS BODY ISNT ABLE TO SIT HIMSELF.

We were treated like he was something in the circus everyone looking it us was a complete disgrace EASYJET ARE A BLOODY DISGRACE THIS WILL BE GOING TO THE PAPERS BELIEVE ME!!!!!!!

To me it sounds like Easyjet were following the rules and to be totally honest this woman is using the fact her sun is disabled to try and get round the rules and as a result endanger him and other passengers.

Royal Legend

wait for it :rolleyes:

Pilotdude5

I think PAX should forfeit their right to free speech.

brandon_flowers

Which one had down syndrome?

Irish Steve

The child is the one that needs to be complaining.

The mother clearly has a fundamental problem understanding airline rules, and what they mean. Easyjet clearly didn't deal with it in a particularly sensitive manner, but that's nothing new, and anyone that's watched airline or similar will know all about that.

The sad thing is that having been found out, she's then gone out of her way to use the child's situation to generate as much adverse publicity as possible, and the likely result is that she could find her name blocked on Easyjet's servers as an undesirable passenger if she's not careful.

Not the first airline to do this, and it will happen again, as long as people insist on trying to break (or even just bend) the rules, and unfortunately, with things being the way they are now, staff at the lower levels have zero flexibility in these sorts of areas, and are no longer allowed to use initiative, or sensitivity, or any other of the normal nice human factors that used to differentiate the good from the ordinary, they are told to enforce the rules rigidly. That then tends to provoke a hostile response, which might make good TV viewing, but it's invariably bad for all concerned, in terms of stress, pressure, discomfort, and usually cost.

LeftBase

What strikes me about this is that the woman clearly wants to be able to hold him on her lap. However she would be complaining more if they hit some chop and he did a Clark Kent across the cabin. Parents dont realise just how hard it would be to keep hold of the kid if there was severe turbulence in flight.

I've seen and heard of parents that want to strap their small child in with them, but they tend to forget that a RTO could see them crush their own child to death in the seat belt.

As much as I hate to have to say it, it seems that she expects to get special treatment and be allowed break the rules and endanger her child and others just because of his disability. Seems she thinks it gives her carte blanche to dictate terms.

castie

To expect ground staff at an airport to recognize severity of medical conditions and then make a call based on their knowledge is ridiculous.

Basic training plus no exceptions lets everyone know where they stand.

Feel sorry for the kid here but the parent really should have notified the airline well in advance of this and gotten airport assistance.

FWVT

She displays a disgraceful level of English, which makes it very hard to take her seriously. Not surprising that she takes such a twisted opinion on the rules.

LeftBase

FWVT wrote: »

She displays a disgraceful level of English, which makes it very hard to take her seriously. Not surprising that she takes such a twisted opinion on the rules.

What is most glaring in all this is "Down Syndrome" at least get the spelling and pronunciation of you own son's Downes Syndrome correct! "Ower" is another facepalmer!

Also some parts of it read like a musical!

"...they say to me what age is your son and i said 2 today is he"

You could put that to music! :rolleyes:

Dacian

I think the issue that started all this was that kids under 2 travel as infants with their parents. As "2 today he is" that means he becomes a full passenger.

Now the service agent could have let that go but decided to enforce the 2+ full fare policy. EasyJet have recently introduced allocated seating, I'm not sure they are working it. Perhaps the 2 of them were allocated seperate seats?
Then when they get onboard the cabin crew spotted that he was too young to be on his own (and perhaps very small for 2) so said that she could keep him on her lap. The mum then goes off the deep end.

This issue is not about the kids overall medical condition, but about how the airline rep dealt with the lady. Downs Syndrome does not prevent you flying but heart surgery does, when was the surgery? Did the woman book the kid as an infant, knowing he would be 2 when he flew? I agree the the lady does seem to want special treatment over an issue that doesn't affect this incident

(personally I saw a flight once where the crew were perplexed as they had 1 pax onboard with no seat...turns out a Irish based but non-national family had booked their 4 years old as an infant assuming they could just seat in a free seat)

vitani

LeftBase wrote: »

What strikes me about this is that the woman clearly wants to be able to hold him on her lap. However she would be complaining more if they hit some chop and he did a Clark Kent across the cabin. Parents dont realise just how hard it would be to keep hold of the kid if there was severe turbulence in flight.

I've seen and heard of parents that want to strap their small child in with them, but they tend to forget that a RTO could see them crush their own child to death in the seat belt.

As much as I hate to have to say it, it seems that she expects to get special treatment and be allowed break the rules and endanger her child and others just because of his disability. Seems she thinks it gives her carte blanche to dictate terms.

For children under 2, a separate seatbelt is provided that goes around the child's waist and then links to the adults seatbelt. So you're not actually strapping the child to yourself.

Having said that, children aged 2 and over are supposed to have their own seat when flying. If she wanted to keep him with her because of his condition, she should have cleared it with Easyjet in advance or flown back home the day before while he was still under the age of 2.

Fully Established

The problem here starts at the boarding gate and is some thing i have personally witnessed and is more times than not caused by poorly trained handling agents .

Of course the Parent could have done things a lot different on the booking , but you would also expect that the passengers be treated as humans .

This problem could be solved at the gate by the dispatcher been made aware of the particular requirements of the passenger who in turn could pass this on to the cabin manager who can deal with the situation .

Have we reached a point that is reflected in other posts that a passenger can not highlight a completely insensitive travel experience ?

I hope thet EasyJet instead of finding the passenger "an undesirable" investigate where the company training failed both at the boarding and in the cabin .

Tabnabs

When she booked the tickets, did she not put in the age of the child and therefore at that stage be required to book a separate seat from him? Or was she trying to pull a fast one and get him on for cheap? Whatever way you look at it, she doesn't come off well out of this.

What's the source for the op? It reads like the Daily Mail...

LeftBase

Tabnabs wrote: »

What's the source for the op? It reads like the Daily Mail...

Somebody linked me to it. It was on a Facebook Page for parents of kids with intellectual disability or something like that.

(im not sure if that is parents of kids who have an intellectual disability or parents who's children have intellectual disability. The way this story is written leaves that open....)

EI-DOR

Somebody please tell me the woman in Question is not an English speaking person. Reading that story hurt my eyes. Never seen so many spelling mistakes in my life. It is that badly worded, I don't know who is at fault!

Was that taking from the Daily Mail?

Edit.

Just seen your reply LeftBase!

HTML5!

I love how everyone is so interested in 'the rules' when they're not the one being treated a little harshly by them.

Commone sense scenario:

I'm sure the service desk agent could clearly tell the severity of the child's problems just by looking at him and how he was 'sat' in their care.

In my opinion, given he's only two that day, clearl visible physical dependancies then I think the service desk agent should've just let the mother get on wtih it and look after her child. Something that was later backed up by the flight attendant.

The mother needs to be make airlines aware in future however.

People who are too willing to just spout 'the rules' and leave common sense at the door in their jobs are some of the dumbest people I've dealt with.

I'd always try and help somebody in a difficult situation regardless.

LeftBase

HTML5! wrote: »

I love how everyone is so interested in 'the rules' when they're not the one being treated a little harshly by them.

Commone sense scenario:

I'm sure the service desk agent could clearly tell the severity of the child's problems just by looking at him and how he was 'sat' in their care.

In my opinion, given he's only two that day, clearl visible physical dependancies then I think the service desk agent should've just let the mother get on wtih it and look after her child. Something that was later backed up by the flight attendant.

The mother needs to be make airlines aware in future however.

People who are too willing to just spout 'the rules' and leave common sense at the door in their jobs are some of the dumbest people I've dealt with.

I'd always try and help somebody in a difficult situation regardless.

When 73 Tonnes of metal are going in to the sky with 150 or so people aboard the rules become sort of important. If you start bending things eventually something will break. Start breaking little rules and soon people start eyeing up the bigger ones!

Gandhi

The problem I have with the airline here is that they changed the rules halfway through the game.

Woman: "My son has to sit on my lap. He can't sit by himself."
Airline: "Yes he can, that will be E66 for his own seat, please"
Woman: "Okay, fine"
Airline: "Your son can't sit by himself. He has to sit on your lap."

She did not mention whether they gave her back to E66 or not after telling her she could not use the seat she had just paid for.

Also interesting that the gate agent made no mention about the heart surgery, but then the cabin chief tried to use it to say he should not even be on the plane.

Obviously there is another side to the story, but the airline should have a clear policy on these things and stick to it.

irelandrover

HTML5! wrote: »

I love how everyone is so interested in 'the rules' when they're not the one being treated a little harshly by them.

Commone sense scenario:

I'm sure the service desk agent could clearly tell the severity of the child's problems just by looking at him and how he was 'sat' in their care.

In my opinion, given he's only two that day, clearl visible physical dependancies then I think the service desk agent should've just let the mother get on wtih it and look after her child. Something that was later backed up by the flight attendant.

The mother needs to be make airlines aware in future however.

People who are too willing to just spout 'the rules' and leave common sense at the door in their jobs are some of the dumbest people I've dealt with.

I'd always try and help somebody in a difficult situation regardless.

I think the reason companies have to stick so much to rules now is that if anything happened to this child them the mother would likely sue. Or at least that is the way the company thinks so they stick to the rules.