Thursday 7 September 2023

Children on a Plane! —キッズ・フライト-

“Enough is enough!  I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!

From the movie, “Snakes on a Plane”, television edit 


Everybody listen up!  We have to put a barrier between us and the snakes!

From the movie, “Snakes on a plane”

 

In the news this week it was revealed that the airline industry has come up with a new way to attract passengers: keep them away from children.  AirAsia, a budget airline, offers a “quiet zone” for adult passengers, in which small children are not allowed. 

Research in Britain suggests that one third of U.K. passengers would consider paying extra money for a flight in which they were guaranteed not to be sitting near young children. 

I can understand how annoying it is to be seated near a screaming child when you are stuck in a small cabin for ten hours.  But there are always earphones and earplugs available.  Children should be expected to be in public spaces like aeroplanes, and not be seen as an imposition.  Isn’t this modern individualism gone too far?  People are losing the ability to put up with a little inconvenience for the public good. 

If it is harder for families with children to book seats on a flight because there are zones on the plane in which they are banned, isn’t that unfair discrimination?  Maybe some travellers would rather not sit near fat people, or elderly and infirm people.  Will planes also have thin zones and healthy zones, to keep out the overweight, or old? 

Somehow this story made me think of the movie in which airline passengers are forced to share a plane with a bunch of poisonous snakes.  I would pay extra for a snake free zone on a flight.




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