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We can all be difficult on planes so why pick small children out for special treatment?
Babies and toddlers, the game is up – good people (adult people) aren’t putting up with your antisocial behaviour any more. Japan Airlines has developed an app with a child icon, showing passengers where small children, aged between eight days and two years, are sitting, thus enabling them to sit as far away as possible from the nappy-wearing sociopaths of the skies. Or something like that. Maybe there’s an argument for hyper-frequent flying business people using such an app, but what about the rest of us – people who occasionally fly for a few hours a time? Is it socially acceptable to hate babies now – leastways, to sit coldly prodding a child icon to banish them from your presence?
There’s something so intrinsically misanthropic about all this, I don’t know whether to laugh or ask for around-the-clock police surveillance on the people who use such icons. Certainly, it raises important ethical questions. Eight days, 24 months – how old is the child you’re prepared to vaporise from your flight experience? If there were an app to force young children to travel in a livestock cage in the cargo hold, would you use that too? Duct taping a kid’s mouth shut – where do you stand on that? Continue reading...