Kudos to Southwest for thinking of the safety and comfort of the other passengers on this flight. The media is always happy to get a scoop where they can take a few pieces of facts and distort them to make up a sellable juicy story.
Autism or not, the bottom line is that these kids interferred with the job of these flight attendants therefore jeopardizing the safety of everyone on that plane. Their work enviroment is not the place to be dealing with unruly passengers, children or adults. While I am saddened that these children and their parents have to deal with this terrible disease all their lives, they cannot expect for the rules to be tossed away and ignored.
I was on a flight from Washington to Frankfurt, Germany once and a child cried the entire 9 hours. Somewhere over eastern Canada it got so bad that the captain threatened to turn the aircraft back to Dulles It was a miserable flight and I felt so badly for the mother and child and for the passengers seated around them. Perhaps the mother could have made the decision not to have travelled that day. The child was crying in the boarding gate and appeared to be ill.
I've experienced this same behavior many many times while eating out. At times, parents seem to be so oblivious to the fact that their children are ruining nice evenings for others. This happens at church, movies, etc. But in an aircraft at 30,000 feet is no place for the attention of the attendants and flight crew to be messed with.
I feel that Southwest and other airlines are completely correct in expecting passengers to behave on flights and I also feel that the airlines are completely justified in removing them when they don't.
This comment is not meant to be mean-spirited. It is still a privilege to be able to afford an airline ticket and to travel by this means. It is not a right.
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