On a late night flight, around 11 p.m., a flight attendant reports that the cabin was dark and most passengers were sleeping. The crewmember walked down the aisle and stepped on something at row 19, tried to step over it, and kicked it. Immediately he heard a baby crying, looked down, and realized he’d kicked a baby lying in the aisle. He calls out: “there’s a baby in the aisle. Whose baby is this??”
The mother picked up the baby, said the baby “needed to sleep” and there “wasn’t any room in the seats.”
The flight attendant later said the mother came to him and said she wasn’t mad – that it was on her – and he adds that later on after he finished the trip “cocktails were consumed at the hotel.” Based on this flight attendant working routes like Miami – Las Vegas it seems like this happened on American Airlines.
A “baby in the aisle” is clearly an egress problem. Of course there are going to be passengers and crew moving down the aisle! And crew are usually going to stop you from putting a human body in the aisle, if they notice.
Regulatory langugage on this is written for carry-on bags. It has to be possible to move during an evacuation without obstructions. The FAA says an airline’s carry-on program should ensure items don’t obstruct movement through the aisle. If the aisle can’t be obstructed by a roller bag, it’s not okay to obstruct it with a sleeping infant.
Of course we’ve seen kids sleeping on the floor before, I just don’t think it’s a great idea. In fact there are several reasons this is a bad idea.
These comments, though, win.
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