Thursday, April 15, 2010

First Entry and flying babies

Wow, I can't believe it has taken me this long to get on the blogging bandwagon. I guess I never really thought I needed one, but felt blog envy and so decided to start my own. If my blog looks ridiculous sometimes it's because I'm just trying out new things. I honestly never thought making my blog cute was going to be something hard, but then again I thought online classes were going to be easy.

But those are almost done so...maybe there is hope after all!


So the biggest thing on my mind today was child safety on airplanes. I know this may sound weird since I don't have children, but I do ride on planes and therefore have an opinion. As I was embarking on my long journey from Salt Lake City to Lewiston via Delta Connections I noticed a woman with a small child (probably 1 1/2 years old) sitting in a section that had to move her little boy onto her lap because she had only purchased one ticket because her child was "young enough" to sit on her lap for the entire flight. Luckily there were enough open seats that this woman could move and have two seats.

But this incident got me thinking about what would happen if a seat was not available for her child? If the child sat on her lap then it would not have a seat belt (which i don't think he was ever in) to protect him nor if something happened and we were to lose pressure, the child would not have one of those ceiling masks. To me it just didn't make sense.

It seems all of the laws we have in this country aim to protect our children, such as seat belt laws in automobiles before everyone had to buckle up it was just children. I mean what if the mother was holding her child and she was hit in the head and became unconscious? The baby would surely be thrown around, assuming the mother had been able to hold on to their child while remaining consciousness. Once I couldn't get on a plane that had a broken seat belt when I was 12, why would having a baby not in a seat belt any different?

Therefore I propose that airplanes should have to make it mandatory that one seat to every person (babies are people and usually more liked than most people, another reason they should be better protected). I understand that airlines are trying to win business in whatever way they can, and people are used to going to amusement parks and sporting events for free with children under a certain age. But in the airline business they are transporting things and people, and the child is still being transporting. I mean why do I have to pay to take a dog? I could probably have a dog sit on my lap the whole flight, have it be more content and be way less annoying.

I am going to see what I can do on this issue because though I had never thought about it before, it is so obvious now that I wouldn't be able to live with myself knowing I could have tried to protect the babies of America.