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'Makes me mad': Common airline act made flying with a baby harder than it needed to be
OPINION - I'm usually a pretty 'go with the flow' style of traveller, but something happened on a recent flight that still makes me mad every time I think about it.
En route from Sydney to Bangkok, about an hour after take off, the flight attendants asked everyone to put down their window shades
Then, they dimmed the lights, so the cabin was nearly pitch black.
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The lights were off for almost the whole flight. Getty
Now, that's great for an overnight flight, when you want to sleep and try to get your body clock synced.
But this flight left Sydney at 10am and landed in Thailand at 3pm - the last thing I wanted to do was sleep.
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If I'd had a window seat, I would have been even more annoyed. Any time someone cracked open the shade to peek outside, it flooded the cabin with blinding light, and the cabin crew quickly asked them to shut it.
I love sitting in a window seat, gazing out the window as we zoom across the world.
I love a window seat - when I can open the shade. Getty Images/iStockphoto
I know why they do it. When the lights are off, passengers are less likely to press their call button, roam around the cabin, or drink too much. It makes life easier for the airline staff, and keeps the cabin calm and peaceful.
But I was travelling with my eleven-month-old, who doesn't yet understand the concept of 'sitting still'.
When the lights were on, he was happy to be held, staring at people who walked past, playing with his toys. As soon as the lights went off, he was bored and trying to escape.
I ended up having to spend hours standing at the back of the plane with him strapped into the baby carrier, where he could watch people walk into and out of the bathroom.
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This is how we spent most of the flight. Supplied
It wasn't just a once-off, either. Many others have experienced the same thing on medium-haul daytime flights to Asia.
"The staff asked me to close the shade, and when I politely refused, I was abused by other passengers," one person wrote on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.
"Is this the new norm? Feed the passengers, then expect them to sleep, when it's still daylight?"
Other commenters on the forum pointed out that having the window shades down makes it easier to see the TVs, and also helps regulate the cabin temperature.
But still, I think it's unreasonable to have total darkness in the cabin unless it's the middle of the night.
We should be able to keep our windows open if we want to. Getty
On some modern aircraft, like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the windows don't have physical shades, but a button that electronically dims the pane - which means flight attendants can override the passengers to lock the windows.
At the end of the day, it's a petty gripe, but I really wish airlines would change this policy and give us back our daylight.
