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January 25, 2007
Boot-off a few more bad bambinos
A Massachusetts couple recently went public after ValuJet (now called AirTran) kicked them off a plane because their 3-year-old wouldn't sit in her seat, as Federal law requires for take-off. The parents move backfired.
ValuJet apologized, but why should they? Shouldn't the parents be apologising to everyone else who was aboard that plane? In fact, ValuJet, previously best-known for its miserable safety record, would do well to bask in the publicity. A survey on MSNBC.com shows over 90% of 160,000 people agreed with the airline.
I sent the Wall St. Journal's travel columnist this message last night:
How can I best express my gratitude to AirTran for removing that raucous rugrat and her feckless parents? When they get rid of reclining seats, I might just be willing to fly ValuJet. If they want to build their business-travel clientele, I suggest AirTran toss a few more troublesome tots and appreciate the good publicity.
I never got to experience the good-old-days of air travel when the stewardesses were young and hot, when they served real meals with crystal and silverware, and when parents would have been mortified if their children misbehaved in public. I don't know if such days ever existed, but I'd like to think they did.
Nowadays air travel involves a bratty bambino being booted from a Boeing and the clueless parents blaming the airline for their own inability to control their offspring. Meanwhile we see what happens when this sort of devil-child reaches age 25:
"There are a lot of young people hitting 25 who are making, say, $35,000 a year, who expected they'd be millionaires or at least making six figures," says psychologist Jean Twenge. She's a professor at San Diego State University and author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable Than Ever Before."No wonder, Twenge says, we hear so many 20-somethings talking about the "quarter-life crisis."
"We're telling them they're special and they can do anything they want -- and then they're growing up and finding out that's not true," Twenge says.
Posted by adrianjo at January 25, 2007 10:18 PM