Passenger Demands Toddler Move From Paid Seat: "Not Ask, But Demand"

Air travel with a child can be pretty stressful. You will probably have to endure some dirty looks if your toddler makes too much noise, you will have to entertain them while trapped inside a large metal tube and you can’t exactly get off whenever you want. But no matter what one does, it can be impossible to prepare for other passengers on their worst behavior.

A woman shared her frustration with an entitled couple who demanded that she take her toddler in her lap and give up one of the seats she paid for. We reached out to the woman in the story via private message and will update the story when she gets back to us.

It goes without saying that air travel does come with some degree of discomfort. Even if we embrace the wonderful fact that you can be nearly anywhere on the globe in under a day or two, there are always a whole host of little irritations that can add up. Just getting to the airport, particularly in a foreign country, is its own task as most nations don’t build runways for large planes right in the middle of a major city.

Airports themselves also come with a series of small annoyances, waiting in lines, security checks that range from efficient to arbitrary and hostile. You might have to go through passport control or deal with checking luggage. All the while, you are surrounded by fellow travelers who might be tired, annoyed or simply nasty. Generally, in life, we can find ways to create some distance between ourselves and the worst people out there, but an airport (and airplane) forces us to be around them for extended periods of time.

Unfortunately, for the average flier, a young child is more a cause for concern than a random couple. The idea of a screaming child on a plane is generally accepted as a regular part of air travel that everyone has to suffer through at some point. From the side, it can be hard to blame a parent, as crying is the main way babies communicate really anything. Imagine you were in its tiny shoes, it’s loud, the air is dry and it seems pretty hard to get any sleep.

At the same time, as a passenger who has to endure possibly hours of screaming will forever remember this flight with terror. Loud, unceasing noise has been used as a torture method in the past, it’s truly not something most people can go through with ease. So it’s commendable that this woman chose to do everything in her power to ensure her toddler didn’t bother other people.

Of course, good intentions mean nothing when they come up against the unstoppable force that is deeply entitled people. Let’s take a look at what this couple wanted. Instead of realizing that there are clearly better options around, they attempted to take a seat from a toddler. How exactly an adult could argue that a toddler getting a seat is “unfair” seems hard to understand. This woman could have bought 20 seats if she wanted to, it would not make a shred of difference.

In their dream scenario, they have made this woman carry a toddler on her lap for the entire flight so they can sit together. This makes sense, sitting together with your group on a flight is preferable to sitting with strangers. It’s also exactly the reason this woman wanted to sit with her toddler, but this has seemingly gone right over their dense skulls. While we won’t know if this is the case, it’s not hard to imagine that sitting on one’s parent’s lap is a lot more uncomfortable than a seat. The toddler would no doubt be squirming, complaining and perhaps at some point screaming and crying.

While this is purely speculation, it would seem that this couple would probably not enjoy a crying toddler sitting right next to them. As so often is the case, a deep sense of entitlement gets in the way of reason. After all, this couple was not asking, but demanding a seat that they had zero right to. Airplanes aren’t public transportation, although even on a city bus you can’t just go around telling people to give you a seat. The fact that they literally summoned a flight attendant is evidence that they truly had not internalized the fact that when you buy a seat, it’s yours.