I travel a fair amount on business. I flew weeks after 9/11. It has been six years. It’s time to get over it.

The plane is not going to blow up because a small child says something that only sounds sinister to paranoid adults. People praying in the back of the plane are not going to blow the plane up. Several Arabs sitting together are not planning to blow the plane up. Terrorist attacks in the US are, actually, really, really rare. And if you happen to be on the one plane that is downed by terrorist attack, none of the otherwise unremarkable shit you think you notice is really a clue; it will happen without apparent warning and there is nothing you can do about it. Sit down, shut up, and if you can’t control your irrational fears, see a doctor. I hear Xanax works wonders; and if that doesn’t work, take two Ambien and sleep through the landing.

I am so sick of one highly coordinated terrorist attack being used as an excuse for people’s anxieties and bigotries.

I thought the whole thing was about the fact he was saying “bye bye plane”… which the flight attendant said was making some passengers nervous (in terms of planes going bye-bye from terrorist attacks). I didn’t think this issue was about a misbehaved/loud child so much as a child who unknowingly used a very unfortunate choice of words in the wrong environment? From there, it sounds like it escalated… which gets back to the behavior of the adults.

We once had an issue where the airlines booked my then-3-year-old son on a different PLANE for a nonstop flight from Hawaii to New Jersey. No amount of reasoning with the agent could convince her that my child should fly on the same airplane as me and his dad. So finally, I just said, “Well, at least I’ll have a quiet flight… not sure about my son’s rowmates but I’m sure you know best.”

New seats were assigned immediately and we all flew on the same plane.

I really don’t think this is the best way to advocate for children.

But I doubt I’d ever drug a 2-year-old for saying bye-bye and I would be really irritated if someone suggested it. That said, it sounds like the whole thing could have been avoided by some common sense on the side of the flight attendant and/or the mom. At that age, children are fairly easy to distract from whatever they are focused on at that moment. It sounds like it became less about how to get the kid to stop and more about a battle of the wills between the two adults.

I really doubt that the only thing the kid was doing was saying “bye-bye” quietly. This is, after all, a complaint in a lawsuit, where the mother has an interest in making the facts look good for her.

But yeah, I’m in agreement that the real dispute was between the adults.

I am so sorry to have been introduced to this web site by Pandagon.

I’m sorry, too.

I take it the other people posting haven’t flown lately.

Right, because if someone doesn’t agree with you, they must not have flown lately.

The WORST traveling experiences I have ever had involve drunken men. Kids have nothing on drunks in the air. But, of course, they are easier to belittle and bully.

I take it the other people posting haven’t flown lately.