Babies can be pretty cute — except when they’re making your life a living hell on a long-haul flight from Canada to Japan.
Babies can become little creatures of pure chaos during an extended trip. Their crying wakes you up, their parents have to squeeze past you to change them all the time, they throw anything that’s not bolted down and they love, love, love to kick things.
Japan Airlines has taken steps to minimize baby-related chaos on board its flights, with a seat map that shows where the potentially troublesome little tykes are located on every plane.
The airline’s online seat-selection tool displays a baby emoji wherever a young child is sitting, so you can select a spot as far away as possible. (Or, if you’re into playing coochee-coochee-coo, so you can sit beside one of them.)
“Passengers traveling with children between 8 days and 2 years old who select their seats on the JAL website will have a child icon displayed on their seats on the seat selection screen,” the airline’s website says.
“This lets other passengers know a child may be sitting there.”
The icons are part of Japan Airlines’ “baby travel support service,” according to its site.
Japan Airlines says eligible seats may be restricted by certain fare types, and that a change in aircraft might affect where the babies actually sit.
The baby icons appear to be a crowd-pleaser online, although they’re not exactly new. Archived versions of Japan Airlines’ website show the policy has been in place since at least 2016.
“Thank you, @JAL_Official_jp for warning me about where babies plan to scream and yell during a 13-hour trip,” user Rahat Ahmed tweeted on Tuesday. He added that the policy should become mandatory for all air carriers.
Ahmed’s observation won plenty of support online, especially among users who said they would pay extra just to fly on an adults-only aircraft.
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Others were more sympathetic toward parents who are forced to wrangle their kids on an ocean-hopping flight.
“They are babies as we all once were,” user @gsundar wrote. “We need to learn tolerance or will soon start needing a map of seat locations for mouth breathers, droolers, farters, drunks and perhaps a lot more things in life. What ever happened to life’s surprises?”
Another user congratulated Ahmed on “surviving” his flight in a sarcastic tweet.
“I think if you have that much of an issue with travelling next to babies, then you should consider coughing up for private,” wrote @jonjparr. “You realize you’re using public transport, right?”
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