Here’s a little quiz for all those who have ever travelled on a no-frills airline. If you’re sitting nice and cosy in your legroomless seat, which you had to run like Bolt to get to, and suddenly out of nowhere, a woman carrying a baby walks down the aisle and decides to sit in the empty seat next to you, do you:
If you find yourself seated next to a parent with a child, try smiling, you never know that might make the baby shriek less- Kristina Chetcuti
a) Smile and offer to hold her bag while she straps down the baby on her lap?
b) Keep looking straight ahead, then eventually fall asleep?
c) You recoil in shock, then you gnarl your teeth, broaden your shoulders as much as possible so she’ll think she won’t fit in the seat, then spend the entire flight going “Tsk tsk, x’għarukaża!” every time the baby gives a little whine?
It’s a fact that most passengers opt for c) or worse. A couple of days ago, I was flying back to Malta on a cheap airline from the UK. A British couple was seated behind me, one on either side of the aisle – the mother carrying a three-month-old baby and the father carrying a year-old toddler. The minute the father sat on his seat, the Maltese guy next to him said out loud for all the hear: “Ajma ħej!”.
The babies gurgled happily away until after take-off. Then inevitably they started crying – the cries mounting to shrieks. The parents frantically tried to calm them down – but soon they set off again. Up and down the plane people kept craning their neck, as if a crying baby is the new circus act in town.
Half way through the flight, when both parents were busy with the inflight nappy changing nightmare down the plane, a woman across my seat started dramatically waving her hands in the air, exclaiming that she “couldn’t bear it” and that she “wanted to kill herself” with this noise and that “this was unacceptable”. She shushed up the minute the mother returned to her seat and started breastfeeding her baby.
Cue for the ‘Ajma ħej’ Maltese chap to share out loud his philosophy of life: “Hekk redda, ħa jagħlaq ħalqu!” (Go on suckle him so he shuts his mouth up!). Then he proceeded to ogle the poor woman as though he had never seen a single boob in his life.
As they say, welcome to friendly Malta.
I’ve been through this quite a few times when my daughter was younger. Once she spent an entire flight crying because of earache, and the 50-something gentleman behind me, put down his Sunday Times, tapped me on my shoulder and ordered me: “Do you mind? Can you control your child?” Oh sure, at your service. Let me just get the remote control, and press pause and all will be sorted.
Here is what we all need to remember: that whether you’re a parent or a pensioner or a singleton out about town, if you’ve booked a flight on a cheap airline, then everyone is in the same boat.
If you paid one euro cent or whatever for your seat, then you’ve got to accept whatever comes with that. Keep in mind that lots of families make use of the cheap airlines because of the math and the family budget: buying four tickets can sometimes be the equivalent of one single ticket on the major airlines.
If you don’t like it, you know what? You should consider travelling with airlines where you can reserve your seat, where you have a little soggy lunch or supper dished out to you and where, if you’re terribly fussy, you can even book yourself a first class seat and be pampered to your heart’s content away from young shrieks.
Of course, I completely understand that the sound of a shrieking child is not one that you’d like as a background to anything, let alone a three-hour flight.
But, pray, may I ask? What do these passengers expect? That babies and children are packed up and sent away with the main luggage in the hold? Or perhaps we should just strap them to the wings?
So next time you fly no-frills, take some Paracetamol, and an iPod with DJ earphones with you.
And if you find yourself seated next to a parent with a child, try going for option a) and smile, you never know that might make the baby shriek less.
krischetcuti@gmail.com