Plane Passenger Changed Seats After They Say Child Threw 2.5-hour Tantrum. The Parents' Response Was a Shock
The child allegedly reached through the seats to touch the passenger and knocked their headphones off their head.
While moving seats, the passenger claims that the parents of the child "heckled" them
A plane passenger is wondering if they were insensitive to a child with special needs after they changed seats to be farther away from them.
The passenger, who shared the ordeal on Reddit, recounts that the incident occurred 30 minutes after takeoff on an international flight. The child, who was sitting directly behind the passenger, began to have 'an inconsolable meltdown," they write.
He was screaming and forcibly kicking and hitting my seat and even knocked my headphones off my head with his fist,' the passenger says.
The passenger claims they only addressed the parents once at the beginning of the episode to ask them "to keep him from reaching between the seats and touching me."
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This went on for an hour, the passenger claims, before they decided they could no longer stay put. They rang the flight attendant call button to ask if there was another open seat they could move to.
The passenger shares that the flight attendant was 'amazing' and 'immediately found a middle seat about 10 rows back.'
As they stood up to make their way back to the empty seat, however, they say it became more of a walk of shame.
"I got heckled by the parents of the kid as well as a bunch of neighboring passengers for being insensitive and rude," the passenger claims.
Now, they're wondering if they were in the wrong "for not just dealing with it.'
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The consensus of fellow Reddit users in the comments was that the passenger was not in the wrong for requesting a seat change.
Commenters who identified themselves as the parent of a child with special needs weighed in in the comments. They sympathized with the parents on the plane, but said how they handled the situation was uncalled for.
'Moments like this is why it can be very difficult as a parent but with that said, they cannot allow their kid to touch anyone on a plane,' said one. 'The comments from everyone else are completely uncalled for as well.'
Another mom who said it can be "a nightmare' to fly with her child, but still felt for the parents. "It's not easy and I'm sure it's stressful for them too but that's no excuse for them to take it out on others.'
The politics of seat swapping is a hot-button topic in air travel, but this passenger followed the advice often offered by travel experts for mid-air etiquette.
'I am always in the camp of getting a flight attendant involved for sticky in-flight situations,' Fora travel expert and advisor Nicole Campoy Jackson previously told PEOPLE. 'Tensions run high when we're traveling, plus they would know if there's a solution to this problem. They have more context than we, the passengers, do.'
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