Questions and Answers

i pay a fortune to travel in international first class so that I can sleep without screaming children next to me. On ALL of my last 4 flights, families were upgraded and I ended up spending in excess of 10hours each flight sitting in front of or behind screaming 1 and 2 year olds. Is there a strategy to avoid this? It happened twice on Delta and twice on United.

United’s international first class is going away, and Delta doesnt have international first class, so maybe you were in business class(at least on Delta)?

Could you have asked to move to another seat, further away from the kids? Most of UA and DL’s international aircraft have two separate cabins for business class.

There isn’t anything that can legally prevent an airline from upgrading families, assuming they meet upgrade requirements.

While you’re not specifically entitled to compensation in this situation, you could reach out to UA/DL customer service and see if they’ll offer you anything.

I recommend bringing your own set of noise cancelling headphones and/or ear plus. Regardless if whether there are kids in the cabin or not, they’d help a lot with noise.

Unfortunately, I haven’t discovered any strategy to avoid screaming infants and children in J or F cabins. Logically, I would assume that flights that show full J and F cabins well in advance of travel dates may not have room for upgrades (assuming that children and infants most often come with upgrades). I have Bose noise cancellation headphones and they are only marginally effective in dulling out the sound of a screaming baby. It’s highly unlikely that airlines will ban children under 12 from premium cabins or create children zones or separate family cabins.