JAL now displays on their seat map where infants 2 and under are seated.
It’s an awesome idea. Before I had kids I certainly would have taken advantage of that. Now that I have my own kids, I don’t even mind the sounds of other kids screaming, as long as they’re not my own.
Our hardest flight ever was from Tel Aviv to Newark this past June. In the past we’ve always taken the red-eye home from Israel and the kids have slept. But this time United didn’t have any good connecting flights back to Cleveland after the red-eye, so we took the daytime flight. Big mistake, our 18 month old let her feelings about the 12 hour daytime flight be known to all those around her.
Of course the real secret to sleeping when there’s an infant nearby is getting yourself a pair of Bose QC35 noise-cancelling headphones.
Now, if only El Al could figure out how to make a seat map with male and female occupied seats, there would be so much less drama on their flights!
Related post: Flying With 3 Kids: Our Airport And Child Safety Strategy.
Do you think other airlines will add this feature to their seat maps?
HT: Mom
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24 Comments On "There’s A Map For That: JAL’s Seat Map Now Discloses Where Infants Are Seated"
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Mom and/or mom1000?
Same thing 🙂
Male and Female seats? is that a “thing”?
Unique problems call for unique solutions.
Dan ur too funny
Making a seat map for male and female seats on ElAl will never work. Because all the men will anyhow change seats in the seat that will be outdated by the time the plane gets off the ground.
However if there’s a way to do it by calling in to the airlines automated phone system without having to see a seat map on the Internet, maybe that will work!
Agreed. Just make a ‘preference’ request… and let ElAl surreptitiously work things out prior to boarding per requests. Bit of a men’s section and a ladies section for folks who request it. People would just have to understand you can’s expect a men’;s section… and an aisle… in an emergency row with extra legroom… closest or furthest to the bathroom and 50 other things. They can add a $5 or $10 surcharge for the request… that should make ElAl happy.
I suggested that as well to El Al management in addition to pink/blue seats. Make the back of the plane have separate rows and expand them as needed.
They’d rather deal with the lawsuits from people who are asked to move than come up with a solution though.
They really work hard to make sure everything they do matches their slogan
הכי בבית בעולם
I think seating by gender is illegal.
It’s not seating by gender. It’s letting people make their own decisions on where to sit.
Thanks for posting this. FYI. JAL has bassinets in BACK of business class. ANA bassinets are in FRONT of biz class. This is for long haul 777’s. I don’t know about 787’s. These seats are usually blocked. Need to call airline to reserve.
In the US this would be age’ism’ and someone would sue.
Isn’t this age discrimination? Sounds like the ACLU will have a field day with this.
Why in the world is this age discrimination??
What if the baby is less than 8 days old? It seems from the article that they wont cause a baby face to display.
(Apart from the question of why people are flying with week old babies…)
“Newborns age 7 days or less may not fly. Infants must be 8 days or older to fly.”
Only after they have a Bris!!!
Does this assume that people buy seats for infants? Many do not so those infants won’t show up. And people traveling together swap seats all the time. Also unless you are the last person to choose a seat, there may be more infants on the flight anyway. The biggest thing is that babies cries can be heard throughout the whole cabin not just the seats right next to them. When they used to have smoking sections do you think that the smoke stayed in those rows? This is a publicity stunt, not a real help.
At least on an international Flight, even if you don’t buy a seat for your infant, you still need an infant ticket to pay 10% of the fare, so they would still show up in the map. In fact those are probably MORE accurate, since for those buying seats, the system often forces you to make up the birthday. It’s true that new infants can always join the fight, obviously nothing you can do about that. I guess someone who really cares about it can keep checking, and if a new infant shows up next to them, they can change seats.
If they do gender-separate seating, they should make sure the men are in the back and the women in the front so that nobody can complain. I think the mehadrin buses in EY should’ve done that years ago.
It’s an American shtus that the back is worse. In EY the secularists took issue with the separate seating no matter which way it would be cut.
I find that the Bose headphones kills the easy noises, but not the screaming voices.
It doesn’t kill voices, but it certainly dampens them.