Too much baggage: There’s a baby left in the luggage
Recently, a mother forgot her baby at the airport.
By ET Bureau |
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The case of the forgetful mother may put further curbs on hand baggage on flights.
Airlines will surely cite the incident of the forgetful mother as another reason to curtail the amount of baggage that a passenger is allowed to carry on board a flight. The recent case of a Saudia flight to Kuala Lumpur requesting and getting permission to return to its departure gate at the airport in Jeddah because a Malaysian mother had left her baby behind at the terminal begs the simple question, “How?” It could well be that she had so many bags to carry that she did not realise for quite a while that the only live bundle was not among them. In the rush to get ahead of the crowd to stuff bags in the overhead bins, passengers forget all sorts of things, so a baby is only to be, well, expected. The race to disembark also leads to similar situations. It is curious, however, that even the ground personnel did not realise that there was an extra infant lying around. Perhaps now the boarding announcements should include warnings to passengers to check that all handheld objects — animate and inanimate — are carried from the boarding area into the aircraft.
The pilot telling the dumbfounded air traffic control staff that the woman refused to proceed to Kuala Lumpur without her baby is equally surprising. Surely, he did not expect even an absent-minded mother to agree to her baby following on a later flight as unaccompanied baggage?
Airlines will surely cite the incident of the forgetful mother as another reason to curtail the amount of baggage that a passenger is allowed to carry on board a flight. The recent case of a Saudia flight to Kuala Lumpur requesting and getting permission to return to its departure gate at the airport in Jeddah because a Malaysian mother had left her baby behind at the terminal begs the simple question, “How?” It could well be that she had so many bags to carry that she did not realise for quite a while that the only live bundle was not among them. In the rush to get ahead of the crowd to stuff bags in the overhead bins, passengers forget all sorts of things, so a baby is only to be, well, expected. The race to disembark also leads to similar situations. It is curious, however, that even the ground personnel did not realise that there was an extra infant lying around. Perhaps now the boarding announcements should include warnings to passengers to check that all handheld objects — animate and inanimate — are carried from the boarding area into the aircraft.
The pilot telling the dumbfounded air traffic control staff that the woman refused to proceed to Kuala Lumpur without her baby is equally surprising. Surely, he did not expect even an absent-minded mother to agree to her baby following on a later flight as unaccompanied baggage?
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