Get kids their own section to run amok on planes

KIDS on planes are the absolute worst. Most people agree that families should sit in a separate section, but Jo Thornely has an even better idea.

LOOK, I love children, but I think everyone agrees they have their limitations. They’re messy eaters, they don’t know many words, they can’t drive, and they’re hardly ever good for a loan.

But by far the crowning glory of children’s social inadequacy is their behaviour on aeroplanes.

Something happens to kids on a flight — they can condense an entire week’s worth of boredom, restlessness, complaining and body fluids into just a few hours.

So it’s not at all surprising that a recent survey reported 52 per cent of air travellers think families with young children should all be bunched together in a separate section of the plane.

A separate section is a good idea in theory, but what the idea fails to acknowledge is the people most inconvenienced and annoyed by children on a plane are the parents of those children.

It’s tantamount to humanitarian crime to force those parents — already sick of the sound of their child and disdainful looks from co-passengers one hour into a 15-hour flight — to surround themselves with the loud, seat-kicking offspring of other equally stressed parents.

It’s like offering someone a holiday in a bucketful of spiders.

I say take it one step further and just give the children their own section. The parents are going to have to deal with them for the rest of the holiday, when they’re nicer to be around and are back to going to the toilet at a normal frequency, so maybe give them a break on the way there and back.

You get on your flight, you sign your children over to a couple of qualified childcare professionals — they’re the tired, terrified-looking ones — then go find your seat and order a drink. You spend the next few hours not picking up dropped toys, not explaining weird food to anyone, not holding open a sick bag, and not saying “shhh” once.

This should NOT be your problem.

Meanwhile, the children — who prefer the company of other children and hate being told to be quiet anyway — are somewhere down the back in a soundproofed, wipe-clean section, colouring stuff in, being loud and directing whichever pig or anthropomorphic piece of machinery is currently popular around a greasy iPad screen to their heart’s content. All the apple juice they want. Sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Not a brussels sprout in sight.

Stick the babies in their own corner with In The Night Garden — the world’s spookiest TV show and universal baby crack — playing on a loop with a comfy chair for visiting breastfeeding mothers and an industrially-sealed waste capsule for soiled nappies.

Sure, it’d have to cost more, but there’s not a single adult on that plane who wouldn’t be willing to pitch in a couple of bucks for a kidless flight.

Given the choice between a child-free flying experience and one where I can’t tell if that smell is the beef stroganoff or a fresh adventure in juvenile toileting, I’d pick the segregated option every time, and I reckon the parents will be right there in the queue ahead of me.

Done. Problem solved. Now all airlines have to do is give everyone three feet more legroom and two armrests each and everything will be perfect.