Taking infants on a flight can be a nightmare, which means many passengers often sympathise with parents who are trying to keep their kids under control. However, one mother has been slammed after she decided to skip a long check-in queue at the airport while travelling with her three-month-old baby.
The parent thought she wasn't doing anything wrong, as another mum had told her it was okay to jump the line, the Mirror reports. However, a few fellow passengers were left outraged by the woman's bold decision.
And the worried mother took to Mumsnet to find out if other people thought she was being unreasonable. She described the situation on an anonymous post on the online forum, explaining the travel party consisted of her herself, her husband and their baby - who were all flying for the first time together to visit family.
She continued: "We had booked priority, lounges and everything we could to relieve a bit of the stress. Priority queue was quite long to check in luggage and we started queuing nicely. Another mum came along and told us we could jump the queue which we did gladly as baby started stirring a little bit.
''However it enraged some of the people in the queue, literally shouting that it was very out of order and that was no such thing as baby class, and what is wrong with you people etc. Interestingly, every other step in the airport (security, customs, boarding) we were invited nicely by the staff to jump the queue."
The mum concluded her post by asking other internet users if they could cast a vote for whether or not they were against people who ''jump the queue with an infant''. Desperate to know if her behaviour at the airport was deemed acceptable or not, she questioned whether parents should ''queue like everyone else''.
The post sparked quite a lot of debate with many people disagreeing with her actions. One person said: ''If offered by the person in front of you, fine. But only to take their place. I’d be very p****d off if you went to the front of the queue just because you had a baby."
A second agreed: "If invited to by staff, or there's an announcement that those travelling with babies can go to the front, of course you can. If invited to go in front of someone else, of course you can. Otherwise, of course not. Even if a randomer tells you to."
However, someone argued: "It's not jumping the queue if the staff invite you to the front. It's not like you elbowed people out of the way!" But a different person pointed out: "Another mum 'invited' her to jump the queue, not the staff."
To clear up the confusion, the anonymous author followed up her post with a comment that said: "The other mum (also with an infant) told us the staff said it is ok to jump the queue and so told us to follow her.
"Then the shouting happened, but in the end an airline lady at the check in counter invited us to jump the queue. I was just a little bit taken aback it would trigger some proper shouting from other travellers."
This in turn prompted a debate about the fairness of the policy, but, again, many people disagreed when answering.
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