The debate of whether people should give up their plane seats for parents traveling with children seems to be a never-ending one. However, it looks like the Rochester-based comedian Cindy Arena has a clear opinion on the matter.
In a TikTok video, she opened up about her views and even discussed her personal experience with a person refusing to give up their seat. Arena didn’t make a big fuss about it, but at the end of the day, the fellow passenger changed her mind herself. Scroll down to find the full story and the video below, where you will also find more information, which Cindy shared in a recent interview with Bored Panda.
Travelers are often asked to switch seats so families can sit together, but not all of them are willing to do so
Image credits: Hanson Lu (not the actual photo)
Rochester-based comedian Cindy Arena shared her views on the topic in a TikTok video that went viral
Image credits: cindyarenacomedy
I love that people are asking this as a question. Like, if you don't have a seat next to your kids, should the person that's sitting next to your children move so you can sit with them?
Image credits: cindyarenacomedy
Like someone's actually asking this question? No. Let them stay with your kids. This has happened to me. The woman refused to get up. She refused. And my two children at the time were like four and six.
Image credits: cindyarenacomedy
Then I said, "Okay, no problem. I'm not going to argue." And I went to the back of the plane and sat in my assigned seat, because she wouldn't give hers up. It was so peaceful. And finally, the stewardess comes up, because I know she's coming.
Image credits: cindyarenacomedy
Because this b**** is sitting next to my kids and there's nothing fun about that. And she said, "Um, ma'am, she would like to trade seats with you now." And I said, "Oh no, no, we need to stay in our assigned seats. Have a good flight."
Image credits: cindyarenacomedy
The comedian’s video reached over 1.6 million views
Quite a few parents choose to travel with their children
The OP told Bored Panda that the story happened 22 years ago. “My children were four and six at the time, and the airline moved our flight around so many times that they did not book us together.” That’s why Cindy said she was very nice to the woman seated next to her kids when she refused to switch seats.
“The airline also comped us first class tickets to fly back home, which was actually quite hilarious because I couldn’t sit with my kids there either because there were only two seats next to each other,” she added. Thankfully, Cindy said her kids weren’t naughty, so people on the flight shouldn’t have been disturbed by her little ones.
Nowadays, there seems to be more and more people encountering similar situations while traveling. That’s far from surprising, considering how many people choose air travel (and how many of them fly with their kids). According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), its Air Traffic Organization services over 45,000 flights and nearly 3 million airline passengers across roughly 29 million square miles of airspace every day.
When it comes to children on planes, it’s difficult to determine how many of them exactly join their parents for such trips. However, it’s arguably safe to assume that quite a few of them do, considering that as much as 44% of parents aged 18-36 travel with their offspring. The numbers were revealed by PR Newswire’s 2018 survey of 1,500 millennial travelers, who at the time of the survey were seemingly traveling more than ever.
Even though parents seem to enjoy going on trips with their children, they reportedly wouldn’t choose to do so with very young offspring. Travel Pulse pointed out that, based on Jetcost’s survey of parents with at least one child under the age of six, they are less keen on traveling with kids younger than two. Roughly 40% of parents traveling abroad say they wouldn’t take their little ones under the age of two and an additional 19% wouldn’t take their three-year-olds either.
Children might not be easy to manage during a flight
Image credits: Domenico Bandiera (not the actual photo)
Whether the kid is three, six, or even ten years of age, tantrums or similar troubles on flights are often inevitable. That can become a cause for concern for both the parent and the passengers likewise. (For the former, going through an airport alone is stressful enough.) That’s why it’s important to remember that sometimes kids have a mind of their own and angry glimpses at the apologetic parent might not help much.
The Atlantic emphasized that despite the parent’s strongest effort, the child might not be convinced to stop kicking the seat in front of them or be affected by their favorite toy being taken away. It also suggested that sometimes, the pressure to keep the child behaving means loosening up on certain boundaries that are typically enforced, such as limiting screen time or the amount of sweets. That allows the parent to get a moment of peace and quiet, appreciated by everyone around, since, as the article reads in part, “in the air, we must face the fact that everyone’s kids are everyone’s problem”.
After the woman on the plane refused to switch seats with Cindy, the latter didn’t make a big fuss about it. She knew her kids were now the passenger’s problem as well, and in the OP’s own words, “there’s nothing fun about that”. The comedian’s video went viral and split TikTokers into camps, some applauding the act of malicious compliance, others saying that a parent must make sure the family sits together in advance.
People in the comments loved the outcome of the passenger refusing to switch seats
Some TikTokers believed that it’s a parent’s responsibility to book seats together
