A report in the SMH today, reports that airlines won’t allocate seats next to unaccompanied children to male passengers. The rationale being, that the majority of child sex offenders are male. The situation was highlighted when a male passenger was ordered to switch places with a woman after he was allocated a seat next to an unaccompanied child on a Qantas flight in New Zealand.
The practice of separating men from lone children came to light after a complaint from a New Zealander, Mark Worsley, who said he felt “extremely humiliated” when a Qantas flight attendant told him to swap seats with a woman after take-off on a flight between Christchurch and Auckland. Mr Worsley, a shipping manager and father of two-year-old twins, had been allocated a seat next to a boy aged about eight. He was forced to change places with a woman who was reluctant to move because she was travelling with her husband.
It appears that the policy is widespread and, with the exception of United who claim the policy is because “women are more maternal”, is done for the protection of children.
The NSW Children’s Commissioner, Gillian Calvert, backed the airlines’ stance as an effort to act responsibly in the interests of children. Although she had a “degree of sympathy” for Mr Worsley over his treatment, Ms Calvert said: “I think they [the airlines] are probably reflecting the statistical evidence that the majority of child sex offenders are men. “In the absence of other tests, it is one way that airlines can reduce the risk to children in their care.”
Now while I agree that the policy does probably ever so slightly reduce the risk of a child be sexually abused on a plane, the blanket discrimination involved to do it - regarding every man as a potential paedophile- seems over the top.
Profiling people based on gender, religion or race as being more likely to commit crime inevitably raises these questions of discrimination. Pre-emptively treating them as such is worse. In this case it would seem that the airline has enacted a policy that costs nothing financially, but still has them seen to be taking care. If they were really concerned about the risk they would ensure that children always sat in their own area.
I think you’re spot on there Steve. I fly fortnightly for work and the airlines obviously use herd management techniques to control passengers. It’s probably the best way for all concerned really, but it’s just the hypocrisy of that ruthless attitude stacked up against the “at your service” rhetoric of airline advertising that irritates me.
The flip side of this particular issue is that as a woman travelling alone I was once effectively placed in charge of a sick solo little boy who happened to be sitting next to me. I know nothing about children beyond having once been one. The man sitting behind me with his two sons leant forward and provided some parenty assistance, luckily.
Remind me to spill sometime about having sat next to Jeff Kennett in a Dash-8 for an hour with nowhere to run…
Yikes! Mere mention of unaccompanied children on planes reminds me of the time I caught measles after being on a Virgin flight from Canberra with a whole heap of boy scouts at the end of school holidays. Adult measles is not fun!
What a stupid policy. Not only does it unfairly deem all men to be paedophiles, but it also unfairly forces women to look after other people’s children. And I doubt it has even a marginal effect on sexual abuse of the children. (Is that a real risk anyway, on an aeroplane?)
I agree it’s stupid, and it only exists because the companies are afraid of litigation.
Why not always ensure an unaccompanied child has a flight attendant seated beside them? Oh, that’s right, that would cost money.
Nope, they’ll just farm out the duty of care to some random woman.
Whether they farm out the job to a random woman or man it’s not really a satisfactory way to do it.
I was once landed with the care of a girl of about 6 when I was flying home from the Gold Coast after a drunken week long holiday with my mates.
A less suitable person to care for a child than a massively hungover 21 year old male with zero child care experience can scarcely be imagined.
Apart from anything else, this is rotten because in the event of a crash, switching airline seats after boarding makes it less likely that the investigators will be able to identify your corpse. Seats have number codes for a reason!
The airlines should also really not put young people in the company of people who could potentially pour free grog into them. I mean, if you were in charge of an unaccompanied 15-year old, who wanted to, say, buy that 300ml bottle of Jacob’s Creek or can of rum ‘n’ coke off you, what could the stewards do?
Sounds pretty fair and reasonable to this bloke. I usually get picked to man a seat by one of the emergency exits. Apparently that’s what we burly peddos are good for! As for the girlie men, well you and the sheilas get the brats. That’s life!
Geez, EP will be SPEWING he can’t comment on this!
I always ask to sit by the over-wing exits, observa. You get more leg room, the chances of crashing are already minimal, and if we did crash then I’d help people get off the plane anyway. If I don’t get those extra six inches, my knees are always sore by the end of the flight, and the person in front has probably got a sore back, too!
I’ve got to sit in the emergency exit aisle a few times and I’m not exactly huge, you just need to agree to help get the door open in the advent of a crash.
The problem I have being both tall and broad is that if you sit in the emergency exit aisle you inevitably get sat next to other large men and have to fight for shoulder space.
Seems like a fundamentally stupid policy to me.
I’ve not had that problem, Steve. In fact, a couple of times there’s been two passengers and three seats — between that and the extra leg room, I felt sorry for the suckers who shelled out for business class.
Robert,
I had this once on a flight all the way to Tokyo. Since then I’ve requested the exit aisle less often. Completely full plane and nowhere else to go. Fortunately the guy next to me seemed pretty amiable about having to rest onto each other’s shoulders for 12 hours so it wasn’t as unpleasant as it could have been.
As usual, everyone ignores the rights of goldfish to fly unaccompanied - which are being trampled on!
I had a gold fish that tried to fly unaccompanied. We found him dried up on the floor.
While we’re on the subject, how much do we like the demonstration of how to inflate the lifejacket - so useful to know when flying from Melbourne to Mildura, in case the plane crashes in a dam or something I suppose.
Naomi, today I wished extra hard I’d paid for the proper Crikey.
And that’s the goldfish’s fault, Steve? Typical mammalian pescogyny!
Fishism is Fascism and is just dicrimination against Mamals.
You know Laura that same thought crosses my mind everytime I fly back to Sydney. About half the flight is over water and half is over land.
I think it’s basically an admission of “if we crash on land, we’re well and truly F*&%$!”.
I don’t see it that way, Kate. If they crash on land, you can run away from the plane, and then wait to be picked up. If they crash on water, you’re basically stuffed without the life jacket.
Always the optimist, Rob!
Aren’t you better off crashing into water as it softens the impact and puts out fires?
And it makes escape by the unaccompanied goldfish easier!
The whistles are good on the lifejackets. Lipsnigers often find it hard to be heard in the absence of amplifiers.
Hey Weathergirl, a certain editor of a certain magazine got marched out the door by a certain proprietor - and not before time.
Oh please be tim blair.
Actually, on topic, I think that this plan is not only unworkable, but also offensive.
Do you like to watch gladiator movies, Billy?
“So billy, have you ever seen a grown man naked?”
I once had this conversation with an engineer.
‘Ditching’ over water, I understand, is safer in aircraft with wings below the fuselage, (most jets) as if it’s done properly and at a slow enough speed the plane will float for a bit upright. Planes with wings above the fuselage (your Melbourne-Mildura DH-8 for instance) tend not to float upright so well. Crashing into the water at high speed is almost as bad as hitting rocks (though on the ground there’s also the risk of a subsequent fire): my friend said, try it in Speedos arse-first from the 10m diving plank and see how it feels.
The secret is to hit the water or ground with as little forward and downward speed as possible—and then, have enough time to get out of the plane before it explodes or sinks.
As to the possible implications for emergency landings over water on carp, a CASA inquiry might be of benefit.
Naomi: “Hey Weathergirl, a certain editor of a certain magazine got marched out the door by a certain proprietor - and not before time.
Got any goss on it?”
Yes I have. Unfortunately I have to cut and paste this because I can’t find it on Crikey’s website (think it’s for subscribers only). But it’s not a fair report. To draw parallels between Christian Ryan’s dismissal and Peter Craven’s departure is a very long bow indeed, from what I know. Here’s the report:
1. Literary frisson dept: The Monthly’s editor departs
Crikey reporter Sophie Black writes:
Has publisher Morry Schwartz picked another fight with a member of his editorial staff, this time booting the editor of The Monthly after only half a year in the hot seat? Just six months since The Monthly’s glossy launch in May, journalism insiders have told Crikey that editor Christian Ryan was pushed by Schwartz after disagreements over content and concerns about circulation.
The Monthly was initially launched, as Black Inc publisher Schwartz put it, out of “New Yorker envy,” and word was that he was prepared to back it for the five years it would take to break even. The Australian magazine scene is littered with the carcasses of well-intentioned glossies that have succumbed to the collective shrug of low circulation but speaking to The Age last year, Schwartz was confident, “Australia is a bigger place, it has evolved… there’s a huge, intelligent market out there.”
Quoted in the same article, editor Christian Ryan was equally confident about his working relationship with Schwartz, saying, “Morry is an old-style publisher…He has mountains of ideas, some are visionary and some quite mad, but he doesn’t seem to mind being told when they’re mad.” Ryan sent out an announcement to fellow staff yesterday announcing that he was leaving, but made no mention of the details behind his departure.
Schwartz told Crikey that Ryan decided to ¬ìleave to pursue his writing.¬î But isn’t it a little early for a founding editor to leave a magazine like this? He was ¬ìalways seen as a launch editor,¬î said Schwartz, and “when you see the Christmas edition” you’ll see what a success the magazine is.
Schwartz is known for his love of the literary stoush, and when he sacked his Quarterly Essay editor Peter Craven, the entrails were examined in detail by literary types and newspaper readers.
Crikey tried to contact Ryan but he’d already vacated the Black Inc premises and we couldn’t track him down. But Schwartz addressed the rumours over concerns about circulation and content, saying, “for this kind of magazine we have the greatest circulation in the country.¬î
¬ìI’m not saying there aren’t teething problems,¬î said Schwartz, but we’re sticking around and it’s going to be a success. As for the departing editor, Christian ¬ìis a wonderful writer,” said Schwartz and “we hope he’ll write for the magazine.¬î
I still haven’t made up my mind about The Monthly. I just hope it doesn’t fall to bits before it’s had a chance to settle down and develop a character.
Yes, its had some excellent things and some pretty piss-poor things. I’ve loved the Robert Manne and Malcolm Knox pieces, but Helen Garner’s piece on moving house… erg. What a catastrophe. And what shithouse design.
Frankly I don’t think they take this profiling shit far enough. They should also ensure that kids aren’t seated behind you as well so I don’t have some little bastard kicking the back of of my seat all through the bloody flight.
Actually I recall flying once on my own when I was about seven (and boy didn’t I feel all grown up: “I can have another dessert? I can? Wow! Can I kick the seat in front?”), seated next to some bloke who spent much of the flight trying to chat up the rather luscious flight attendent deputised to look after me. As I recall he did pretty well too. She certainly kept bring me stuff I didn’t ask for and then lingering around. Not sure how that would fit into the current profiling MO.
And speaking as an aviation buff and air crash aficionando, here’s a few tidbits.
- The jet engine pods on commercial airliners are designed to come off on heavy impact. Isn’t that reassuring?
- The evacuation slides that pop out from the cabin doors double as liferafts and were invented by the same folks who came up with the ‘Mae West’ lifejacket.
- JATO and RATO (jet and rocket assisted takeoff) systems for getting heavily laden planes off short runways were invented by a devout protege of Alister Crowley.
- The majority of civilian plane crashes (some estimates go as high as 60%) are caused by human error.
- The majority of civilian plane crashes (around 50%) happen during the descent, approach and landing phases - usually because pilots have misjudged or been surprised by weather conditions.
- When the ‘black box’ flight recorder, invented in Melbourne in 1957, was first offered to RAAF, the response was “…no practical value…would yield more expletives than explanations…”
And here’s a fun site for anyone planning to fly soon.
I’ve seen the results when a plane hits solid ground. not pretty. having nominated people in their nominated seats goes some way towards helping with identification post the event, but…
and water doesn’t compress, but maybe you can bounce off it if you connect at the appropriate angle…
Geez, thansk Nabs. Next flight I’ll be thinking about all the little things.
Have noticed that if the flight attendants look relaxed say in turbulence then there is no need to worry. Of course on a flight into Coffs Harbour a few months ago we had bit of a dodgy landing (strong wings etc). I was seated at the back of a Dash-8 and had a look at flight attendant as we swerved down the runway. It wasn’t comforting to see her with the rosaries out. Ok, it wasn’t that bad but she did admit after we stopped that it was a rough landing.
With the exception of John Birmingham’s piece, I find The Monthly predictable and boring. As if there aren’t talented new writers around and we need yet another forum where Manne and Garner get a chance to write predictable stuff. The whole thing reminds me of the sort of dullness that ABC TV exemplifies these days. If it sinks, then the reason will be that it lacks an edge and there’s little compelling reason to part with money to buy the thing.
I share some of your sentiments, Mark, but not “with the exception of John Birmingham’s piece”. I find his writing insufferable, full of clever turns of phrase, full of wry, smarmy observations, but totally lacking in humanity. All the right noises are there, but no heartbeat, to me. And how about his comment in the first issue, “in the argot of gangsta, we is all John Howard’s bitches.”
Well, weathergirl, I didn’t say that the Birmingham piece was something I was particularly enamoured of!
“I find The Monthly predictable and boring. As if there aren‚Äôt talented new writers around and we need yet another forum where Manne and Garner get a chance to write predictable stuff.”
Fuck yeah! What I plonked on about ‘Investigate’ applies just as much to ‘The Monthly’ (You could have a thousand monkeys programming parallel-processing supercomputer grid arrays for a thousand years and still not come up with such pompous, pointless and pissweek title too. At least Claud Cockburn had shock value on his side when he came up with ‘The Week’ - where its film critic, one Graham Greene, got sued for implying Shirley Temple films were flirting with pedophila.)
With both the ‘The Monthly’ and ‘Investigate’, their contributers and target audience should be having more productive fun on the interwebs. Let’s face it, technology has brought us back to the 18th century tradition of shitstirring pampleteers and gentleman and lady amateurs penning provocative and thoughtful essays.
If you want to make a full time of being a roving text-based content provider these days, then dead tree-wise it’s wrangling commissions at dinner parties for sluggish op-eds, clumsily provocative polemics and colour mag pieces, writing “The Da Clancy Code” or adland and PR hackwork - and online it’s porn, astroturf and/or product reviews.
Not inconsequently, the quality of online writing goes up almost in inverse proportion to its profitability.
That’s the argot of Eddie Perfect - it was sorta funny when he said it, about two years ago…..
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. The new design is truly awful. Apart from the wanky (and offputting) small-cap lowercase Qs, it’s now incredibly dull.
I though John Harms’s short piece about The List was quite good, though.
Robert, re empty exit row seats, I was told by Australian Airlines checkin staff that some of them are always locked up in case a really tall person checks in. This was in the process of phoning someone at a higher level to get one released for me. (I’m 6′4″, and I’m told that their treatment of me is, probably unconsciously, discriminatory. I almost always am offered an emergency row seat whereas men my height are only sometimes offered one. My theory is that they translate from “really extraordinarily tall woman” to “really extraordinarily tall person” by accident.)
I deplore this trend of charging for them, incidently: United does this (as “Economy Plus”) and so does Virgin Blue. At the moment I can still usually get one for free, but I’d be surprised if that doesn’t change before long.
Oh and I pity the first unaccompanied child who gets stuck next to me. (Although under-15s can’t sit in emergency rows, so maybe this won’t be for a while.) I haven’t been around children for so long that I’ve reverted into the “so, and how’s school? oh, and what do you want to be when you grow up?” patter.
On topic: I think this post is inflammatory. Asking someone to move seats is not ‘discrimination” or “profiling”. I can understand why a father of toddlers would have felt unhappy being asked to swap seats in this way, but if he’d thought further (and imagined his own children travelling alone on a plane), he may have understood the general idea behind it - more women have more contact with children, more women work in the ‘helping’ and service sectors, so women in general are more likely to be friendly and unscary to children who are on their own. And there is always the very slight risk of men being actively aggressive etc, which is much more likely than a woman behaving in that way. And then there’s always the chance, as happenned to a 63 year old friend of mine (I blogged about this early this year) of sitting next to a man who fell asleep with his penis hanging out on a long haul flight. In that case, the staff refused to change her seat.
Suzoz,
I was wondering if anyone would take that stance. I’ve actually been surprised by the uniformity of people thinking its a stupid policy. I thought it would be more evenly split, although I was not trying to inflame but provoke some discussion.
The stated reason appear to be that it is because of risk of sexual assault to the children because men are a higher risk group. Now that is exactly profiling men as a higher risk group in my book and treating them with suspicion on the basis of belonging to a group.
Now I agree on the scale of important discriminatory actions, not being allowed to sit next to unaccompanied children is pretty small, and for the most part its not noticed because they do it in the seat allocations. However I question a policy that rather than acting in some meaningful way to oversee the children’s welfare rather uses a blunt and fairly insulting discrimination against men.
The thing is, men *are* a much higher risk group when it comes to sexual, physical or verbal assault.
A much higher risk in terms of constituting a large percentage of those who would assault the child sitting next to them on an airplane. The absolute risk of anyone actually doing this male, or female is very small.
As I stated earlier, I think this is mostly about a cheap way of being seen to do something. Ensuring all members of the public were kept separate would be what you would do if you were seriously concerned that offences might be committed against the children.