As every parent knows, flying with a baby is like making yourself a target for other passengers on the plane to glare and send hateful vibes as soon as they see who you brought on the flight. But sometimes it isn't the fellow passengers who mom shame and hate on babies. For one mom who was flying from Sydney, Australia, to San Francisco with United Airlines, it was a flight attendant who seemed to have a problem with her baby after the woman told her that it was “ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE” for her 8-month-old baby to cry on the plane.
The mom took quick action and blasted the flight attendant on the airline's Facebook page: "Parents of newborns have it hard enough already traveling with a baby and we certainly don’t need CREW MANAGERS piling on," she wrote.
The drama started on September 24, after Krupa Patel Bala shared her experience with a flight attendant named Linda on the United Airlines Facebook page.
Writing from the plane, Krupa said that, "I’m currently in business class on UA 870 from Sydney to San Francisco and I’m beyond infuriated at the inflight experience I’m having with our head flight attendant as she just told me it’s 'ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE' for my baby to cry on the plane."
The mom explained that she and her husband had purchased two business class seats and "a bassinet for the baby" on their long flight. Of course, Krupa's son started to get a little fussy and before long he was crying, much to Linda's chagrin.
"After about 5 minutes of the baby crying in the bassinet, Linda (the flight attendant manager who is also our server and the purser) came over and *yelled* at my husband it was 'absolutely unacceptable' for the baby to cry," Krupa wrote.
The parents then picked up their baby, per Linda's request, to calm their son, but unfortunately the little one wasn't having it.
"When Linda returned, I kindly tried to explain to her that her request really stressed me out as he’s AN EIGHT-MONTH-OLD and we have 13 hours ahead of us on this flight — he’s going to cry again and I don’t have any control over that," Krupa recalled. "She told me we could discuss it in economy and not at my assigned seat."
The two women walked back to economy, where Linda "dropped some knowledge" on the new mom and chastised her parenting. Among the list of things that Krupa should have been doing, Linda told Krupa she "should have given the baby his bottle back," she "shouldn’t have tried to put him to sleep because the lights weren’t down and he’s 'obviously' too excited," and Linda told her that airlines "don’t even allow babies in business class."
Krupa asked Linda if United was one of those airlines, to which she retorted that it "clearly" wasn't and that her baby needed to be quiet. Linda also told Krupa that babies "are not allowed to cry for more than five minutes and (this part was yelled) it REALLY STRESSED THE CREW OUT."
Krupa says she and her husband asked other members of the crew if the baby's cries were disturbing them, but "they had zero idea what we were talking about."
Linda also told the mom that it was "part of the rule book" that babies are not allowed to cry for more than five minutes. The mom shot back that she wanted to see the rule book, but was told there was no Internet. "Yet. Here I am. Posting this in-flight via WiFi that I specifically purchased to post this for $28.99."
The real problem, Krupa explained to Linda, was that although she understands that a crying baby is not the best co-passenger on a plane, "there is a more constructive way for her to ask us to manage the situation."
Krupa said that she would have preferred for Linda to ask the couple to "walk the baby around," had a little more tact if the noise was disturbing other passengers, "or really ANYTHING with a smile that acknowledged that we weren’t out to make everyone (including us) suffer."
"Her response to that was to tell me that it didn’t matter because it was just unacceptable for the baby to cry and as the parent, I need to control him," Krupa finished.
Since posting her complaint, the message has been liked more than 1.5k times and shared more than 200. Many people agreed that it was unacceptable for the flight attendant to take the new mom to task and blamed United for not taking better care of their passengers.
"United should be absolutely ashamed of this behavior by one of their employees," wrote one person. "We need to stop expecting babies not to cry and start expecting the rest of society to get over it."
"That is absolutely disgusting," wrote another. "Can’t even imagine the stress you all felt."
And a third added that, "I think United would be very wise to rethink their training procedures."
CafeMom has also reached out to United Airlines, which said:
We’ve been in touch with our customer via social media and United representatives met the family upon arrival to apologize, offer a refund and make clear that the experience she relayed doesn’t reflect our commitment to serving our customers, including our youngest customers. Young families are welcome on our flights, including in business class. We are continuing to review the incident internally and the flight attendant is being held out of service pending the investigation.
And it looks like amends have since been made. Later in her original thread, Krupa commented that in the past day, many representatives from United reached out to the mom to send their apologies. "The captain and rest of the cabin crew, they are all lovely, kind, wonderful humans," Krupa wrote. "Linda is the exception and not the norm — and for what it's worth, she remains unapologetic."
Krupa said that to the best of her knowledge, United has been handling the situation internally and they'e assured her that they want to ensure that "no one else ever has an experience like ours where a flight attendant makes up her own rules."
Krupa ended her message with a slight joke, "I wish you all a great day and future flights with babies that cry for no more than five minutes."