Passenger shares ‘awful’ experience after sitting beside kicking child

A passenger has reignited debate around flight etiquette after revealing their “awful experience” on a six-hour plane journey.

Taking to Reddit to share her story, she said she was flying across the US but that things started going wrong “before the plane even took off”.

She said: “There was a mom with a kid both yelling in the airport terminal. I’m not sure of the kid’s age but he was around the age he could talk full sentences (not well though) and understand what his mom was saying.

“I get on the plane and they’re the last to board sitting right next to me.”

The Reddit user said that she was sat next to the window and the child in question was seated beside here on a plane “full of kids” aged from “something months old to 16”.

“The flight was terrible. The kid was noisy and loud, throwing a fit any chance he got. His mom would offer him food and he would say no, but then cry when she put the food away. I did my best to ignore it because it wasn’t going to help and also the mom looked exhausted,” she claimed.

“The kid kept slipping out of his seat and trying to grab my bag. His mom would stop him but he knew he wasn’t supposed to be doing it because he would wait for her to look away and do it.

“At one point I was trying to sleep and he just kicked me in the hip. Yeah, he sat sideways and just kicked me. Finally, the mom just grabbed him and put him in her lap, which he didn’t like and threw a fit for a good while until he gave up.”

Once the flight was over the passenger said she was “relieved to finally be away”. Despite there being other younger passengers, the woman stated it seemed that she “got sat next to the only kid who was a problem on the flight.”

Replies to the Reddit post were supportive of the passenger, with one user writing that the mother “should’ve switched seats so she was between you and the child she couldn’t control”.

Last year, a man documented his irritation with a baby who cried continuously on his 29-hour flight to Berlin, with reactions to his video including the suggestion that “there should be kid-free flights and kid flights” and that airlines “shouldn’t allow kids on flights longer than four hours”.