Respecfully, while I have my reasons for not changing seats, there is no need for me to inform anyone of those reasons. A simple, "Thank you for asking, but no." should be sufficient - repeated as necessary until the person asking realizes that IS my response.
You are apparently giving none of these children any credit for knowing how to behave in public when separated from a parent by several rows. Thousands of children fly each year as unaccompanied minors. If they can be separated from their parents for several hours and by several vertical and a few hundred or thousand miles, it's not unreasonable that most children can fly several feet away from their parents ON THE RARE OCCASIONS that it may be necessary.scuba said:
Respectfully, would you mind clarifying "a lot"? Flying is the safest mode (as evidenced by, among other things, the FAA allowing lap children over the far more dangerous per mile traveled automobile; and exactly how many air travel tragedies - especially commercial airlines - occur each year, especially in comparison to those same miles-driven statistics) of travel.scuba said:
I work for an airline- they're not going to seat the young child alone. 20% of the seats are reserved for airport handling, so they will have the flexibility to accomodate requets of people with young kids, and people with disabilites who are seated in restricted areas etc.
Think about it- if you're in 5a and she's in 10c, she's basically an unaccompanied minor. They're not going to allow that . But Drusilla is right- we can override premium seats you can't access online, so try calling. You may be happy you did.
My point is not that my kids are better travelers than other kids, because they are not. My point is that kids can handle a lot if we just give them the information they need and do not pass on our irrational fears to them
Of course, I am the kind of terrible parent who let the two kids (together) come home from summer camp from Berlin alone on the train (5 hours). being the very American parent I am we went into the train station in person to buy the tickets and ask if it was allowed for a 10 and 12 year old to travel unaccompanied. I got a baffled look and was asked why it wouldn't be allowed
and as you walked away from the ticket office you could hear the German thinking "verruckte Amerikaner"
I can see this happen
I'm always amazed how overprotective the US is regarding children. You almost get yailed for waring Speedo's
I had to ask though because I am pretty darned sure in the US it wouldn't be 
). It was me, the male teacher and 12 kids from the international school, 8 of whom were American. We arrived at the hostel and the office staff were telling us they had never had anything like this with any other school group. 7 parents had called the hostel in the prior week to ask questions about the hostel, the weather, etc. and a few of the parents called multiplie times. We figured those 7 parents accounted for all the American kids except my own daughter--and I was there
This is an incredible thread, first I think we are confusing behaving appropriate while sitting alone on a plane VS. a minor having the ability to save ones self and not contribute to others being injured or worse. I regretfully used the word tragedy, I should have used the word mishap, emergency, accident.....anything that would require folks to get off the plane in fashions other than what is normally used, slides, window exits, tailcone exits, add in the old engine fire and smoke in the cabin and that reasonable person you mentioned that might or might not have looked after your kid cannot be found, infact he is already on a bus to the termninal. I cannot tell a reasonable individual simply by looking at them, can you? i'm certainly not going to trust their decisions in knowing what is best for my child in an emergency. I would tend to agree with you that most folks would indeed help a child, but your not going to risk my childs safety on an assumption.
as for the questions you asked from me, we tend to fly about 4 times a year, and considering several 40+ year olds in my family have yet to fly I would consider that fairly frequently, as a dependant of a retired Air force father, aviation has always interested me, because of this I count rows to the nearest exit, actually look and listen to the safety announcements and frequently as questions. Interesting to me is after flying with our daughters I found out that FAA doesn't allow for more than 1 lap sitter in a row, because some aircraft that has 3 seats on one side, there are actually 4 masks that fall....I digress, as for the emergencies I frequently hear about, most recently the Hudson most successful crash? controlled water landing if you will. before that the dash 8 in Newark, France Air 230 airbus, before that a Continental 737 in Denver that skidded off the runway resulting in engine fire and fire in the cabin, and don't even get me started on overseas crashes and accidents.
As for the minors traveling across the country alone, I cannot fathom why we allow this. I did a quick search and found out that most airlines do not 100% take responsibility for the minor and infact very nearly treat them as if they were adults....scary stuff. Again are we believing that these minors in the event of an emergency can indeed save themselves? I hope not...using your reasoning, thousands of children walk across busy streets without getting hurt but I don't advocate it unsupervised...how about swimming? thousands of kids swim each year without killing themselves but i'm not willing to allow my children to swim unsupervised. I work in a very busy ER as a charge nurse and usually a dozen or so minors present to my ER with notes from parents asking us to treat them, seriously treat a medical condition of a minor with a note giving us permission? you have gotta be kidding me?, I think this is negligent in so many ways. never would I send a my kid to the ER without my wife or I and I certainly wouldn't stick them on a plane and send them cross country....yiiiikes
lastly, on the topic of is my kid safer while flying with her next to me as opposed to sitting even 1 row in front of me........absolutely, I put their mask on, I throw them out a window to a waiting life boat in the event of a water ditching, I check to see if their seatbelt is on. Is my kid safer now flying with me right beside her, more so than the minor flying alone. you bet! much safer than assuming that the airlines or a responsible stranger would remotely consider the safety of my child before his or her own safety....for me it's very hard to understand your position because it is in complete contrast to mine and nearly unfathomable to me to assume that someone would take responsibility for my child under duress and panic....wow
. I find it a little offensive that you just assume then I must have a "this will never happen to me attitude" (not so, really--I take many sensible precautions and I worry all the darn time; I am very prone to anxiety) OR that I do not understand the possible dangers of air travel (as I explained before I am related to someone who studies that for a living--in fact DSiL was also working on airline litigation full time when my children were preschoolers so we DID hear about every wreck, emergency landing, etc that happened during that time from two well informed sources. The kids and I were also on a freak set of flights when they were 2 and 4 where the first plane's door did not seal properly and we had to turn around and land. DS had major issues with his ears for the next several flights after that due to the extreme pressure change we went through. The replacement plane on that same trip had an engine go out and made an emergency landing in Dallas while we waited for a third plane. So yes, I know things can happen. I had been on planes that things DID happen on. I still did not pitch a fit when my kids had to be seperated from me. I looked at the odds and decided it was as good a call as any I could make. We also still drive in cars, and the kids still went to school, and we occassionally made a dash for the car in a rain storm--taking our chances with the lightening., etc.)
