Seriously? Flight attendants are not baby-sitters. It is not their responsibility to control children with or without exceptionalities. Their job is to ensure the safety of the passengers. If anyone is out of control or not obeying the rules, it is their responsibility to make sure that whom ever is out of line is quickly put back in line.
If it were a child who is not autistic and just overactive or the victim of careless parents ... the same action would have resulted. It is not an issue of autism. If a flight attendant is responsible for knowing all conditions and how to deal with people with various conditions ... they would be call psychiatrists not flight attendants.
Is it just me or does anyone notice it is never the parents' fault? The finger is always pointed elsewhere ... i.e. flight attendants, teachers, society, etc. It is the parents' own inability to accept reality that results in these sorts of issues. If the parents know that this could be the possible outcome of their autistic child being confined to a plane for an extended period of time ... then alternate arrangements in transportation should be made. Again, parents not accepting the reality that their children shouldn't fly.
I fly rather regularly and would have appreciate the flight attendants responding to this situation the way that they did. Refunding their money was probably not the best message that could have been sent. Is this to say that all I have to do is act up on a flight and it's free? If anything those aboard the plane should have had their money refunded. Sadly, the parents of the children will use them as an excuse to get 'stuff.' It is giving them an excuse for themselves which really has nothing to do with their child. So if the child wasn't already facing issues ... they now have crappy parent to deal with as well.
I pray for those involved in this situation. Especially for the children that have these two women as supervision and use them to get what they want.
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