Flight to Toronto canceled as child refuses seatbelt, stands on seat; passengers stranded for 24 hours: ‘Parents should be fined’
A flight was delayed by a day because of a misbehaving child who refused to sit and fasten the seatbelt. The incident took place on a Porter flight PD4444, which was scheduled to fly from Victoria International Airport to Toronto on August 6. The flight was preparing to head for the runway when crew members noticed that a child was not wearing the seatbelt.The parents and the crew members failed to get the child buckled into the seat, following which the flight aborted the takeoff as it was considered an unsafe condition. “Attempts by the accompanying parent and crew to address this were unsuccessful. The aircraft could not takeoff in this unsafe condition, so the crew elected to return to the terminal and have the passengers disembark,” the airline said.The second option was to leave the misbehaving child and the parents who could not control their child and fly with the rest of the passengers. But by the time the airline crew was able to return the plane to the gate, get the child and the parents off along with their bags and complete the necessary paperwork, it was too late. The airport closes its runway at 12.30 am.The flight was then rescheduled to August 7 at 10.49 pm and then reached Toronto on Saturday morning. It’s not known whether the affected passengers were compensated because of the 24-hour delay.
Incident triggers debate on soft parenting
The incident stunned social media users as absolutely ridiculous and they questioned how the parents could not make their child sit and instead pushed other passengers to a series of untoward incidents. “The parents didn’t do anything, apparently they said it’s his individual right to not wear a seat belt, according to people in r/VictoriaBC on the flight,” one wrote on Reddit.“How ridiculous is that? Return to the gate, quickly unload the child and parents and leave,” one X user posted.“The parents should be fined,” another X user posted. “Parents should have gotten off and forfeited their bags to allow the plane to continue,” one wrote.
