Meno – “As it is, a vast majority of people who fly don’t fly with small children, so it shouldn’t be a big deal to just consolidate those who do.”
I’m not sure what your point is. Are you saying that it shouldn’t be necessary to have an adult-only section since they can just consolidate those who are flying without kids? If that is what you are saying, that is exactly what the point of adult-only sections is – to consolidate those who are flying without kids. But they are only going to do it if the people ask. Why should they do it unless they are specifically asked to do so (and probably paid as well)?
Or when you wrote, “it shouldn’t be a big deal to consolidate those who do” are you talking about the adult-only sections and saying that you don’t think it’s a big deal and you don’t understand why we are having a discussion about it?
If that’s your point, I don’t think that anyone here thought it’s a big deal. Joseph thought it’s discriminating to children, so others explained why they don’t think so. And then posters were just writing about how and where it’s done.
And then LC brought up one practical problem, and CTL and others gave solutions to that problem.
The only thing that’s “a big deal” about it is that it seems to be a newish concept and one that most airlines haven’t thought about doing until recently. I guess it just never occurred to them.
It’s funny because just last Shabbos I was at someone’s house and someone was talking about kids on planes and I asked if there is such a concept as a child-free section, but I had never actually heard of such a thing before, and then, punkt 2 days later, someone starts a thread about it..
I wonder why no one ever thought about it before. Maybe because it sounds discriminatory. Or maybe because it’s only really necessary on international flights, and the seating arrangements on those can be so complicated as it is.
I remember one El Al flight I was on. I was in a row with 3 seats, the middle seat was empty, and there was an 18 year old boy on his way to Yeshiva in the other seat. A Frum man came over and asked him if he could switch seats. It had something to do with the fact that he was traveling with his little kid but hadn’t been able to reserve 2 seats next to each other, so he figured that he would wait until he got into the plane and try to find a way to rearrange seats.
The boy said “no”, but felt uncomfortable about it, and after the man left, he explained to me that he had already changed seats once even though it meant giving up a window seat (or maybe it was an aisle seat?). So I was like “but what are they going to do?” And he said, “don’t worry; the plane can’t take off until everyone has a seat.”
End of story – the plane took off about an hour late. There were a ton of kids on the flight, and it seems like there were many people in the same situation.
Another time, when I was flying between EY and the US, there was an untzniusly dressed lady sitting nearby, and I saw that the Frum man walking down the aisle who was supposed to sit next to her didn’t look so comfortable, so I offered to switch seats. This also entailed my asking the girl who had been sitting next to me to switch seats with her father.
The point is that when you have all these other seating complications to deal with, I could see why adding in another factor could get really complicated.