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Comment by brettcvz | Hacker News Reader

Strongly agree. I’ve been made to multiple times to wake up a sleeping baby that was strapped to my chest and it feels absurd for everyone involved.

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This never happened to me when I had babies, thank god, but I would almost certainly have politely said "no" to this request. It isn't very fair to the flight attendant who is just trying to do their job, to force them to figure out how to handle an uncooperative parent with a sleeping baby, but IMO it's a very reasonable battle to pick. I think essentially every flight attendant would just let it go.

Flight attendants, like mostly anyone else, have a job to do. Much of their job involves keeping hundreds of people safe at the same time. Not obeying a FA's order is a federal crime and could be a felony.

I am aware of that, and also would politely reply "no" to being asked to wake my baby up for no good reason. It is extremely unlikely that this would lead to a felony conviction. It would make the flight attendant's life harder, which I would lament, but being politely told "no" by a parent is not the kind of uncooperative disruption that the laws around obedience to flight attendants are designed to avoid. This is not the same kind of problem as running up and down the aisles yelling and being disruptive.

Having said all that, if I thought I could get the baby out of the sling without waking them up, I'd probably try that first though. (I'm pretty sure most flight attendants aren't enforcing this silly rule to begin with, because I'm pretty sure I would have experienced it if they were, I used these slings / carriers all the time, including on planes.)

a flight attendant was annoyed that my diaper bag was in front of feet instead of in front of my feet by 3 more inches. While feeding a fussy baby as a parent traveling alone, with no hands free, I gave then a look of "are you serious?"...while I proceedes to make my daughter cry quite a bit to shove the bag a bit more.

Just being a flight attendant doesn't make them great humans to be around.

Yes I know they aren't always great, but they're still people with tough jobs and I don't want to make their lives harder. But we're also all people and I'm very skeptical of this "everyone is a robot who must enforce and comply with silly rules in their entirety" mindset.

> It is extremely unlikely that this would lead to a felony conviction

Uh, you'd be surprised. Once you refuse, they are going to insist, and if you still refuse to comply, or they're going to return to the gate and have your ass removed. They don't pick and choose which rules to enforce.

And yes, they do enforce this rule. We experienced it all the time when my son was a baby.

I doubt this. I mean, to begin with, on landing there is no way to "return to the gate". Prior to landing, it seems very plausible that a flight attendant would come by and ask me to take my sleeping baby out. I may make politely decline or make some movements to suggest I'm going to do that, without waking the baby up. It is possible that the flight attendant would then stand there until it actually happens. Maybe, but this seems unlikely to me. My experience is not, in fact, strict enforcement of all these silly rules. Some of them - tray tables and seat backs for instance - yes, others - seat belts and electronic devices for instance - no.

If the flight attendant did stand there, I would probably wait for awhile for them to decide to move on. I would certainly not become angry or loud or aggressive (definitely a bad move). If they really can't let it slide, I'd probably stop being stubborn at that point. But an initial polite "no" seems like a reasonable battle to pick even so.

On landing would be the less useful time to resist anyway because you've only got 15 minutes before you start a lot more activity that can easily wake them anyway. It's on takeoff that it's painful, since if baby is asleep they can sleep right through part of the flight.

> all these silly rules [tray tables and seat backs for instance, seat belts...]

Most of these rules are based in sound research, and were created to avoid repeats of things that exacerbated deadliness of previous air accidents. Calling them silly really makes one look like the sort of know-it-all who thinks that the whole aviation industry is dummies. Exactly the sort of person who bickers with FAs trying to inform you of the safety rules.

PS: I support the baby carriers myself. Argue it with the FAA, not with the FA on a plane.

Oh I see it totally the opposite. The baby isn't asleep when you get on the plane, they fall asleep while you're flying. The time this is most likely to arise is at landing not takeoff.

The point of that paragraph is that it's just not true, in my experience, that all these rules are strictly enforced because they are of Utmost Importance, as a number of you have told me is the case.

I think this is indeed a genuine personality difference. I'm always making decisions about risk tradeoffs and about what battles are worth picking. That doesn't turn off and switch into blind obedience mode the moment I step on an airplane. The tradeoffs do change quite a bit, but they don't go away.

I do think it's notable in this whole discussion that I've never had anything but pleasant interactions with flight attendants. I just don't have this same experience of them as robotic appliers of All Rules, the way you and others seem to be describing them.

> I think essentially every flight attendant would just let it go.

I predict they will not let it go, and it will escalate to escorting you off the plane. It's a violation of federal law to allow you to keep your child strapped in, and the attendant risks losing their job.

Maybe you're right, but I'm skeptical. I've forgotten to buckle my seat belt plenty of times and nobody is standing there to make sure I do it or escorting me off the plane if I don't.

Just be very careful with this. Flight attendants have the force of law behind them and you never know when they'll decide the right way to handle an uncooperative passenger is to have police meet the plane when you land.

I mean that would certainly suck, but if I'm actually out of line, then having the cops meet me is the right move, and if not, I really think prosecutors have better things to do than prosecuting evil baby holders.

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