Recently, I have been going to a lot of meetings that occur in office buildings other than my own. Several of these buildings are very tall, (as is true of so many buildings in Chicago) and many of them have little tvs in the elevators, to entertain you as they whoosh you up from the 1st to the 66th floor in 25 seconds.
I know! TV in an elevator! Ridiculous, right? Because that 30 seconds of un-media-saturated time was just making us feel so out of touch, you know?
Anyway, the C aptivate tv network, which does all of this elevator tv programming, conducts surveys about random topics and publishes the results on the little elevator tvs. (Imagine explaining THAT to people at a cocktail party: “what do you do?” “oh, I write surveys for the elevator tv network.” “um……wow. That’s…..um, great?”)
Today’s survey: “What new service should airlines offer passangers?”
The winner, with more votes than “free wifi” and “modified seatback reclining policies”:
Child-free flights.
SERIOUSLY? This is the worst thing about flying, the fact that there might be a child sharing the stale plane air with you? I mean, we’ve all had the crying baby sitting near us on a flight, and it’s not awesome, I’ll admit, but saying child-free flights would be BETTER THAN FREE WI FI? Who ARE these voters? It’s almost enough to make me want to log on to the C aptivate network’s website. Almost.
So, do child-free flights fall in the same category as child-free weddings? If so, I see where we stand on the major issues! hahaha! I kid!
See, this is totally why parents allow their embarrassment about their kids’ tantrums to get in the way of proper parenting. Because people are so mean and judgmental about kids. It’s amazing, too, because it’s the one thing we all were. Selective memory, I think.
wow. i guess if people are willing to, say, pay first class fares? just for no kids? uh, i guess they should feel free? man, that’s harsh.
I love the elevator tv – you’ll get addicted to it. When I go home and am in the elevator in my building and there’s no tv I think “What a cheap ass elevator to not even have a tv. How will I know what the weather is before I walk into my apartment?”
If I didn’t live in the area and remember the story from last summer, I would think it was an urban myth. If there is a better reason for child free flights than a pilot TURNING AROUND AND LANDING THE PLANE because a kid threw a fit over apple juice, I can’t imagine what it would be. Here’s the URL for the story:
http://www.nbc10.com/news/13575254/detail.html
All I can really say is Wow.
I’ve been on flights with children, and I’ve been on flights with no children. I vastly preferred the flights without some idiot in front of me who insisted on leaning the seat back into my personal – limited! – space, and the ones in which the width of the seat was more than my hips, and the ones in which there were no drunk people being loud. I fly a fair amount. I am almost never troubled by children. But I am frequently troubled by the poor manners of other passengers, and by the poor design of the aircraft.