There were several headlines about incidents on airplanes this past weekend -- two scary and one amusing. One story involved a very-real attempt to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. A Nigerian man was thwarted in his attempts to allegedly ignite explosives aboard a Detroit-bound plane from Amsterdam on Christmas Day. Another headline was about a weird but harmless coincidence that occurred on Sunday: A passenger, who was also Nigerian and also aboard a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, apparently set off false alarms among fellow passengers and crew members when he spent a lot of time in the bathroom of the airplane. That man turned out to be a sick passenger rather than a terrorist.
The third incident on an airplane involved Ivana Trump, who was apparently escorted off a West Palm Beach-to-New York flight on Saturday after allegedly cursing and yelling at children who were running around and causing a ruckus, and then yelling and cursing at crew members who tried to calm her down.
I know all too well that tempers can flare when you're a traveler stuck on an airplane with unruly kids, but if the reports are accurate, then Trump went a bit far. I've certainly been on planes with crying or rowdy kids, but even before I became a parent myself, I knew two things: That even though the parents who weren't doing anything to control their kids could've done a better job, my getting angry with them would certainly not help things; and the parents who were trying (but whose kids were upset anyway) needed fellow passengers' sympathy and understanding, not judgment.
Trump is a mom herself, and should've known better than to lose her cool with the kids. She could've calmly expressed her unhappiness about the unruly kids to the parents or to the airplane's crew. She could've tried to remember back to when her own children were young, and probably needed discipline when they weren't behaving as they should've been.
It's hard to say what the parents of the allegedly rowdy kids could or could not have done better without getting the whole story. One thing is for sure: Cursing and yelling at kids, no matter how frustrated you are, never helps things, especially when you are in small quarters and good behavior is essential, even if you are an influential celebrity.
Have you ever been tempted to discipline other parents' kids on an airplane? Have you been on the other side, trying to discipline or calm your own kids when they were disruptive to fellow passengers?
I don’t know the specifics of Ivana Trump’s incident, but I have lost it in an airport and I can understand how it could happen to anyone. Blaming the kids or the parents or Ivana herself is pointless. How long had Ivana been in transit? Had there been any delays or long waits for any reason? I lost it after 24 hours in transit from Washington DC to Toronto. It should have been an hour and a half flight. The stuff a customer has to endure before and after getting on the plane all add up. In my case, I didn’t have enough medicine for such a long delay and my blood sugar rose to the point where I was not able to control myself. The airlines did not help at all. The staff were overworked, we were handed off to a new ground crew 3 or 4 times and no one explained to the new crew what we had already endured. I believe that the flights were overbooked and understaffed. In this kind of situation I have only compassion for the children, their parents and Ivana. I have not and do not intend to fly again. Period.