Adults only cabins? Never: I’m a travel journalist and that’s why I love babies on planes

Last year, Norwegian airline Corendon made headlines by announcing a flight with a cordoned-off ‘Adults Only’ section, where children are prohibited. Like many stories about children in public places, this sparked intense debate.

But I think children – and especially babies – are unfair targets. As a travel writer and journalist, I made my living for 14 years, partly by taking planes to foreign locations (I’m so sorry, environment).

In hundreds of flights, I have never seen a baby as disruptive as a drunken thug. Or groups of bachelor parties, who have the power to make an airplane cabin feel like it’s 3 a.m. in a seedy nightclub, without the temptation of being tipsy and possibly scoring a kiss. And then there are many, many men I’ve sat next to with a casual relationship to personal hygiene and the belief that their flatulence deserves to be shared.

Babies don’t compare. They are animated butterballs of instinct and curiosity. When they scream and whine on a plane, unlike the aforementioned parties, it’s not because of a lack of respect for you happy holibobs. Like so many of us, they are trapped in a glorified steel tube, screaming through the air.

But more than that, I love babies on planes.

Stay with me.

I can’t convince you to be charmed by a toddler in your cabin, but I can encourage you to observe them with anthropological fascination. Instead of rolling your eyes at the sight of an amorphous sleep thief in your row, try to enjoy their sweet face – one moment gormless, the next moment dignified and curious, bouncing atop a cherubic body.

Or their astonishing enthusiasm for things we encounter every day, like seat belts or tray tables. How their distorted faces, when grumpy, resemble miniature Winston Churchills, rightly offended by the world before them. And when they smile at you, it can flow right through you, like drinking fresh water in the desert.

Watching these adorable, sentient potatoes get excited by the immeasurable surprise of their new environment can be a cheering spark of life to what could otherwise be a rather dull, boring journey.

I also understand, and feel very sorry for not liking babies.

I understand. I know what they are doing wrong. They’re smelly, sticky. Terrible conversation partners. Contribute little to society apart from physical waste. Absolutely never pick up the tab.

Babies on planes are a welcome sight, argues Katrina ‘because it demonstrates humanity’s ability to accept the inconvenient for the sake of the greater good’

And I don’t think babies should have access everywhere. Don’t take them to a Quentin Tarantino movie. Fox hunting. A strip club is Right Out.

In short, I am not a paying member of the Cult of Unquestioning Baby Adoration. Some are little beep words. But I love seeing them on airplanes because it symbolizes humanity’s ability to accept the difficult for the sake of the greater good.

Our value as human beings lies in how we treat the smallest, most vulnerable members of society – and babies are the smallest of the little ones, the most helpless among us. Wittgenstein said: ‘the limits of our language are the limits of our world’. When babies cry – preverbal, half-animal, all instinctive – they are trying to make their world bigger and trying to integrate themselves into ours.

No, it’s not fun sitting next to a loud, frantic baby. I have enormous empathy for non-parents who wish for a peaceful transition, robbed of their serenity. And equal scorn for lax parents who allow their ‘precious bundles’ to watch rowdy Peppa Pig episodes on an iPad or kick the seat in front of them without asking them to do so. But I think we have to combine the rough with the smooth.

‘Child-free planes’ Reddit is a very funny internet rabbit hole where people – anonymously – vent about how to deal with children on planes. Suggestions range from soundproofing the last few rows and making it a kid’s zone, to “just throwing them in the overhead bins” to “banning them altogether.” The jokes, I love them. But that last suggestion wakes me up.

People who strongly say “Don’t take babies on planes” suggest that procreation means parents have to live in a hermetically sealed environment for a limited period of time while they educate their children. They punish because they saw that the world needs to be populated.

To which I say: raising a child is not easy. It is, to paraphrase Jerry Maguire, a siege at dawn and pride. If anyone deserves a week in Tenerife, it’s new parents.

“No, it’s not fun sitting next to a loud, frantic baby,” argues Katrina, “but we have to take the rough with the smooth.”

I also wonder about people who whine about babies on a plane (yes, I’m aware this sounds like a family-friendly sequel to Sam L Jackson’s ‘Snakes on a Plane’) – if they are aware that they were once – almost certainly – a baby themselves.

A young Damien who inevitably drove their parents, and probably other adults as well, into swampy, hitherto unknown frustrations. We all were. I don’t want to get into Elton John’s lyrics, but being patient when new babies have a good time, well, jerks – that’s the circle of life, right?

So to Carendon I say: the idea that children and their parents belong in what is essentially an airplane ghetto where they dare to travel suggests that anything that temporarily causes noise, discomfort and distraction should be banned to appease the anger of certain individuals . .

It means that plane tickets of children without children are more valid than those of parents with babies in their arms, that collective, public spaces are in fact their spaces.

If you believe that, how can we ever integrate children into society, arming them with the skills, morals, and grace to become thoughtful adults? What, I wonder, makes you so special, and makes them – barely baked – worth banishing?