United Airlines apologizes after telling mother it was 'absolutely unacceptable' for her baby to cry during flight
A mother claims a United flight attendant yelled at her for traveling in business class with a crying baby.
Krupa Patel Bala was traveling on a United Airlines flight from Sydney to San Francisco on Tuesday with her husband and 8-month-old boy earlier this week when her son began to cry.
In a now-deleted post on Facebook, she wrote that after about five minutes of the baby crying in the bassinet, a flight attendant named Linda came over and “yelled” at her husband that it was “absolutely unacceptable,” according to local San Francisco news station KTVU.
“We picked him up, per her request, and tried to get him to calm down,” Bala wrote in the post.
“When Linda returned, I kindly tried to explain to her that her request really stressed me out as he’s an-eight-month-old and we have 13 hours ahead of us on this flight. He’s going to cry again, and I don’t have any control over that.”
Both Bala and the flight attendant walked into economy class to discuss the little boy’s crying, KTVU reported.
The mother claims Linda told her she should have given back the boy his bottle and shouldn’t have tried to put him to sleep without the lights off. She also claims Linda told her the baby’s crying was stressful to the crew, because babies aren’t allowed to cry for more than five minutes and most airlines don’t allow babies in business class.
“I was told it’s part of the rule book that the babies are not allowed to cry for more than five minutes,” Bala wrote.
“When I asked to see the rule book, I was laughed at and told I could see it when we landed because there’s no internet.”
Bala explained to Linda she understood people on board would be frustrated with a crying baby, but “there is a more constructive way for her to ask us to manage the situation.”
“She could have asked us to walk the baby around, tactfully shared that it was starting to disturb passengers, or really anything with a smile that acknowledged that we weren’t out to make everyone, including us, suffer,” she wrote.
“Her response to that was to tell me that it didn’t matter because it was just unacceptable for the baby to cry, and as the parent I need to control him.”
She later added the captain approached her with Linda to offer an apology, but she still believes the flight attendant was lying about complaints.
United Airlines released a statement to KTVU about the incident, stating: “We’ve been in touch with our customer via social media and United representatives met the family upon arrival to apologize, offer a refund and make clear that the experience she relayed doesn’t reflect our commitment to serving our customers, including our youngest customers. Young families are welcome on our flights, including in business class. We are continuing to review the incident internally, and the flight attendant is being held out of service pending the investigation.”
According to KTVU, Bala updated her Facebook post before it was removed, saying, “Over the last day, we have spoken with numerous representatives from United. Like the captain and rest of the cabin crew, they are all lovely, kind, wonderful humans. [The flight attendant] is the exception and not the norm — and for what it’s worth, she remains unapologetic. From what I understand, United is handling the situation and ensuring that no one else ever has an experience like ours where a flight attendant makes up her own rules. I wish you all a great day and future flights with babies that cry for no more than five minutes.”
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