bye bye, plane

are nowadays flight attendants retarded or what? at least for the one that a mom and her 19 months old son met on express jet airlines is ... after trying to tell the mom to drug her baby boy so he can shut up from saying 'bye bye, plane' ... i would be concerned if it were a 19 years old person, but what can a 19 months old do beside throw a tantrum, yell and scream, cry ... and saying 'bye bye, plane' should be the least of a concern. at least the baby is not yelling 'bomb bomb, plane.'

From Associated Press on Yahoo! News:

Mom says she, toddler kicked off plane
Thu Jul 12, 2:15 PM ET

A woman said she and her toddler son were kicked off a plane after she refused a flight attendant's request to medicate her son to get him to quiet down and stop saying "Bye bye, plane."

Kate Penland, of suburban Atlanta, said she and her 19-month-old son, Garren, were flying from Atlanta to Oklahoma last month on a Continental Express flight that made a stop in Houston.

As the plane was taxiing in Houston en route to Oklahoma, "he started saying 'Bye, bye plane,' Penland told WSB-TV in Atlanta. The flight attendant objected, she said.

"At the end of her speech, she leaned over the gentleman beside me and said, 'It's not funny anymore. You need to shut your baby up,'" Penland told WSB-TV in Atlanta.

When Penland asked the woman if she was joking, she said the stewardess replied, "You know, it's called baby Benadryl."

"And I said, 'Well, I'm not going to drug my child so you have a pleasant flight,'" Penland told the TV station.

Penland said other passengers began speaking up on her behalf, and the flight attendant announced they were turning around and that Penland and Garren were going to be taken off the plane.

Penland and her son were let off the plane and did not complete the trip to Oklahoma, said Kristy Nicholas, spokeswoman for Express Jet Airlines, which flies as Continental Express on behalf of Continental Airlines.

Attempts by the Associated Press to reach Penland under a telephone listing that matched her last name were unsuccessful.

"I was crying, I was upset and I was thinking, 'What am I going to do? I don't have anything with me, I don't have any more diapers for the baby, no juice, no milk," Penland told WSB.

Nicholas said, "We received Ms. Penland's letter expressing her concerns and intend to investigate its contents."

fart, matches and no gps!

it is a dawn of a new era. when our body expells chemical attack and matches can be used on planes and we are still lost (and died stranded) even with all the technologies around us.

a sad world ... i am sad just to type this up. how stupid can you be to light up a match on a plane especially after 9/11? even if you passed a killer gas attack, others around will not die from it other than a little embarrasment from you they will live. and you can still ride the plane instead of being blacklisted from all the airlines.

and also i am sad about the death of cnet senior editor james kim out of all the people who died! ... why him? i guess geeks also runs their course. rest in peace ... my hearts goes out to his wife and kids! thank god they are okay.

are breasts really that offensive?

according to one flight attendant it was. it wasn't even flashed at her, but the baby. for the purpose of feeding the baby i do not see that as offensive cause i am a nursing mom too. but then the mom should have just cover up or have the husband cover up for her whatever makes it easy instead of getting booted of the plane.

Nursing mom files complaint against airlines
Updated 11/17/2006 8:57 AM ET

By Emily Bazar and Sam Hemingway, USA TODAY

A clash between a nursing mother and a flight attendant has sparked a discrimination complaint, an airline investigation and a grass-roots protest.

Emily Gillette, her husband, Brad; and their then 22-month-old daughter, River, were removed from an Oct. 13 flight from Burlington, Vt., to New York after a flight attendant asked Gillette to cover up while she was breast-feeding the girl.

Freedom Airlines operated the Delta Air Lines flight.

Gillette, 27, filed a complaint against both airlines last week with the Vermont Human Rights Commission alleging that the airlineviolated a state law that allows women to breast-feed "in any place of public accommodation." The airlines have until Nov. 27 to respond, Gillette's attorney, Elizabeth Boepple, says.

In a show of support, about 30 mothers and fathers and dozens of children staged a "nurse-in" protest at Burlington International Airport on Wednesday.

"I've always nursed my children when I'm on a plane," says Carolyn Beer, 34, of Burlington. "Their ears hurt with the altitude change, and it's a strange environment for them. The alternative is to let your kid scream."

The Gillettes, of Espanola, N.M., boarded the flight shortly before 10 p.m.. They had been in Vermont visiting friends and were headed to New York to see other friends and Emily Gillette's sister.

Gillette took the window seat in the second-to-last row, she says, and her husband took the aisle. She began nursing River, using one hand to hold her shirt closed. She says: "I was not exposed."

But the flight attendant approached, tried to hand her a blanket and asked her to cover herself, she recalls. "You're offending me," Gillette quotes the woman as saying.

"I'm not doing anything wrong and I will not cover up," Gillette says she said in response.

Spokesmen for the airlines declined to discuss specifics of the incident.

The flight attendant walked away, Gillette says, and a few minutes later, a ticket agent boarded and said the flight attendant had ordered them removed.

The airline arranged for a hotel for the family for the night and a flight with a different airline the next morning, but Gillette wasn't satisfied.

"No woman should ever be ashamed of breast-feeding," she says. She wants "both airlines to create policies that protect a woman from being harassed for feeding her child on an airplane."

Delta is working with Freedom on an investigation, Delta spokesman Anthony Black says. "Delta supports a mother's right to breast-feed-slash-bottle-feed her babies on our aircraft," he says.

Freedom spokesman Paul Skellon says breast-feeding on a plane is OK if it's done in a "discreet way."

Forty-three states have some form of legislation protecting a woman's right to breast-feed, according to Mary Lofton, spokeswoman for La Leche League International, a group that encourages breast-feeding.

Lofton says the league has had a growing number of contacts from women who say they were harassed for breast-feeding on planes.

Sharon Panitch, 37, a massage therapist who organized the Burlington nurse-in, says people who object are "hypocritical."

"We just want to take care of our children," Panitch says.

Sam Hemingway reports for the Burlington Free Press