Well, you know, feet spread reasonably so as to allow access and...

Having once been seated between two huge (both fat and tall and broad) men, one of whom was wearing a short sleeved shirt and had some kind of skin condition on his arm and was literally pressing it against me (he had to, there was nowhere else for him - or me - to go), yeah, I asked the stewardess to find me another…

Sorry but for people with very sensitive hearing (and especially sensitive to high-pitched sounds), screaming babies are fucking hell. When you're on a night flight, and thought you might get a bit of sleep, a crying baby is fucking infuriating. And yeah, I sympathise wiht the parents, and I realise traveling wiht…

In arguing with somebody about this online several years ago, I finally said "Look, my daughter is still learning to respond gracefully when she can't have what she wants, and that the universe isn't fair, and that she needs to be patient when her needs conflict with those of the people around her. She's four. What's…

Yeah, I can testify that if your baby is crying on a plane, there's basically NOTHING that can be done. We didn't get the bulkhead seat because there were so many other babies on board that someone else beat us to it, and I'm sure for other passengers (especially those without children) that adds an element of "all…

I loved that you held your kid out to him and told him to do something about her. Mad respect.

One time I asked a woman at work if she offered to give the woman next door to her a break when she heard the woman screaming at her kids after hours and hours of the children crying, bickering over toys, and being sick. The woman said no, she felt like calling CPS and letting CPS offer support was best. Best for…

I get that, and I just spent a 14-hour flight in which three babies took turns crying.

The parent is getting it worse than these snowflakes. You're frustrated, tired, embarrassed and still have a squirming child in your lap you're trying to keep from kicking the back of chairs or other passengers. I can't put in headphones and watch Iron Man 2. Just deal with it. It's not their kid and soon enough, they…

Pfft, I am on the mother's side here.

I know a baby's crying can't be helped in most cases. But damn, babies crying on a flight you just can't exit is the most annoying thing in the not so friendly skies.

Maybe airlines should make other seating arrangements for children.

I get pissed at crying babies like I do at the El train being loud when it passes over my head. It's annoying, but nothing you can do about it, so moving on.

What is up with people who get all pissed off about crying babies on airplanes? Get over it you special snowflakes.

tis interesting to hear some laughing. i guess its like, what else can you really do?

My seatmate on my last flight was a grown man who looked like he wouldn't be scared of anything. He spent the entire flight shaking in fear at every tiny jostle, while I - a girl - spent it reading. And trying to reassure him that yes, the plane will stay in the air and we're not going to die today.

I wouldn't mind turbulence but "free falling" or taking a nose dive would definitely make me cry. :'(

Also, I'd guess that we never evolved to understand/assess the threat level of vibrations etc from things like trains, planes, etc. Natural equivalents would be like avalanches, earthquakes, etc, in terms of what we can process, and all we really process is: get the fuck out!

It's really weird too - I was on a flight that hit turbulence so severe we had to make a severe emergency descent, and it was almost silent. Just the noise of the plane creaking and an occasional whimper from a small child. Not to say it wasn't tense - they probably had to pull a few hundred fingernails out of the…

My old failure analysis prof once said that however severe you feel the vibration, you are probably over-estimating it by an order of magnitude. Once he was on a suspension bridge when a train passed by and he thought the bridge would be shaken into pieces. When he went back to the office to download the accelerometer…