Flying High: sexism, paternalism and sheer idiocracy

What are the dangers to a kid flying alone ?

Airline policies and parents concerned about allowing unaccompanied minors to be seated next to men make a travesty of both reason and justice.

That this fear feeds paternalistic policy and parental concerns is ludicrous.

If you send your child unaccompanied on a plane, your child has more chance of dying in a plane crash than being molested!

Tracey Spicer, journalist and Sky News anchor has recently affirmed her support of this controversial airline policy saying “I don’t want my kids sitting next to a man on a plane.”

Her statement is, as she admits, sexist. It most certainly is, but my major issue is that it is patently wrong and misleading.

It is said that we use only 10% of our brain, that 20% of statistics are made up, and the remaining 90% of the population aren’t any good at proportions.

Come Fly the (Not So) Friendly Skies

Get this. Many airlines will not allow an unaccompanied minor to be seated next to a man, even if he is a father. Mirko Fischer was asked to change seats with his wife, who was pregnant and had asked for an aisle seat for more comfort. The problem? This left Mr Fischer seated next to an unaccompanied minor, which was a no, no according to company policy, so Ms Fischer had to switch to the middle seat before the plane could take off.

Mr Fischer sued on the basis of sex discrimination, and was awarded £2161 in court costs and £750 in damages. BA subsequently changed its seating policy. In turns out that Mr Fischer was not alone. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, was also asked to switch seats on a BA flight, even though he was seated with his own children! One of his kids had to switch seats with him to occupy a seat next to an unaccompanied minor. Qantas and Air New Zealand have admitted to having similar policies in the past.

Now regardless of the assumptions and good intent on which this policy is, no doubt, based, it is patently absurd.  An airline flight is the last place a pervert would be able to molest a child.  In a plane? 10,000 meters above the earth?  Toilets the size of matchboxes, and uniformed flight attendants endlessly circulating about the cabin? So the policy is asinine on the face of it.  But the implication is obvious.  Men can’t be trusted.  Even a father of four young children is deemed, by his gender alone, to be more of a risk than a single, childless woman with a nose ring and a rather unusual teeth to tattoo ratio. He is a potential molester; she is not.