[hurricanelili]

I've been trying to get a proper response from Air Canada concerning a flight to Calgary in February. A young child, two years old, was very frightened before take off and wanted to get off the plane. The parents were doing what they could to ease his fear, but the child was quite upset and frightened. The flight attendant was clearly tired of his antics and decided she would just grab the child and forcefully place him in his seat and angrily fasten his seat belt while yelling "he HAS to be in his seat!!". As you can imagine this traumatized the child and he became hysterical. He was crying so hard he started to vomit and the father had to struggle with a plastic bag because the two flight attendants couldn't bring themselves to offer an air sickness bag.

My emails to Air Canada are met with the canned "I'm so sorry for your experience". I want Air Canada to apologize to the family, it was the most appalling display of customer service I've ever had the displeasure of witnessing. The inconsiderate email replies I keep receiving are only adding to my anger. I want someone higher up to be made aware of what happened on this flight from hell.

Is my only option Robbi the useless customer service representative?

[cortney]

the way this complaint sounds is that you are not part of this family. is that correct? If not, i dont think you will ever know if they did/will appologize to this family? They aren't going to email or call you saying "we appologized to this family for the rude behavior of our flight crew..." What the flight attendant did was WRONG! no doubt. but all you really can do, since this wasn't your family (the way it sounds) is complain to the agent or air canada and leave it at that. its up to the family to complain more and see what can be done for them

[Gromit801]

Subtract the 50% inflation factor of most complaints in here, and it's more likely the kid was running in the aisle refusing to behave, the parents as usual weren't doing squat that was meaningful, and the FA had to settle the situation or boot them off the plane.

[jimworcs]

Psychic Gromit strikes again!

[hurricanelili]

Cortney,

I was sitting in front of the family. The family barely spoke english and did their best to calm their child. The father explained that the woman had just arrived in Canada. The flight attendants were out of line, they complained about the six of us sitting in the back two rows, oblivious to the fact that I could hear every word.

Regardless if I am family or not, the entire experience affected me and my daughter. The family's 5 year old daughter was upset and ended up vomiting every where (including on us). It was incredibly upsetting. To witness the outright lack of compassion and understanding from the flight attendants was appalling. Even more so, the father tried to tell the flight attendants that his son was fearful and she said it didn't matter he had to sit in his own seat. This completely contradicts the 'lead' flight attendant who later told them that they could have made arrangements for one of the parents to hold the child. And 'that they should have let a flight attendant know that the child was frightened.' Really? He

The family won't complain and someone had to stand up for the disgusting way they were treated.

The most revolting part was the flight attendants welcoming the woman to Canada, after they had belittled them the entire flight.

Air Canadan should be ashamed.

[xjcaptain]

Sounds like the flight attendants were more concerned about the child's safety than the parents were. As a captain and father of 2 sometimes you need to be the adult, make the child sit, and dont worry about hurting their feelings. The tears are better than permanent injury from being tossed around the cabin due to not being belted in. Most parents wouldnt consider driving in their car at 30mph without having the child belted in, and would probably call the police on others for doing the same. However the same people think its ok to not use seat belts in an aluminum tube with no airbags at 600mph. I'm sorry, but the flight attendants were clearly smarter than the parents, and the others that still think its ok to not be belted in. That's why flight attendants refer to unbelted kids as cabin missiles.

[miftygirl]

Now a days a lot of people lack parenting skills. I dislike inflicting my kids on other people and I don't like people inflicting their kids on me. So when I asked my child's doctor how to keep my two year old quiet on the plane, he recommended 1/4 teaspoon benedral. This made him sleepy through the whole trip. Anyone with a two year old will know how active they can be. I did this until my kids were old enough to understand that they were not to inflict themselves on other passengers. They learned to be good polite flyers from an early age.