Reader Brandon left a comment on the post I wrote a few days ago about whether it ever made sense for a dad to fly in business class while his wife and baby fly back in coach. He said:
I once gave up a free 1st class upgrade to a woman with a baby. The mom looked super stressed out and couldn’t believe I would do that for her. That gate agent about fell over too saying “nobody does that.”
It felt good to help her out and was funny to see the looks on the faces of those in first class who couldn’t believe a woman with a baby might ruin their first class atmosphere. The baby didn’t make a peep and the mother told me it was the most sleep she had in days.
Moral of the story. Babies can be in first class just like anyone else.
Nicest thing you’ve ever done for a fellow passenger
So that got me to thinking. Let’s not turn this post into a “whether babies belong in first class” post – since that’s probably a discussion for another day! I wanted to think about the NICE things that Travel (especially in cramped quarters in the back of an airplane) are stressful situations, and often seem to bring out the worst in us. I often like to joke about the time that a fellow passenger told my wife and I that we were “the type of people that shouldn’t have children“, or stabbing each other with pens, and then there’s the story of United (supposedly) FORCING a family to sit in (near?) vomit.
Still, there are plenty of examples of people doing nice things for other passengers. Besides Brandon, here was a recent tweet from Leslie at Trips With Tykes.
Poor solo mom on my flight w 3 under 3. Offered to help if she needed it & I have never seen someone so grateful. #PayItForward #TMOMDisney
— Leslie Harvey (@TripsWithTykes) April 16, 2015
So… what’s the nicest thing you’ve done for (or maybe had done for you by?) a fellow passenger while traveling?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
NRT to DTW – a Japanese teenager with intestinal fluid loss (the nicer way of explaining) and low blood pressure. I started an intravenous line using cabin lighting (!) and rehydrated her while doing my best to reassure her in my very broken Japanese. She was moved up to the front of the plane to lie down and was much better on landing – no need to divert to somewhere in Alaska.
As an aside; when I went to check on her about an hour later (and pull the IV) I was met at the curtain by an FA I had not seen before who firmly told me that BusinessElite was off limits to economy pax. That was the closest I ever got to a thanks from Delta.
Sheesh! Talk about #fail by Delta… 😀
The nicest thing I’ve done is move seats (from my pre-assigned seat) so that the mom next to us could give her lap child his own seat. A flight attendant saw that I was switching seats and would not be sitting next to my boyfriend for the flight…and we both got bumped up to first class.
Thanks for featuring my tweet but I had to chime in and tell the rest of the story! I pitched in a few times to watch that woman’s kids while she took one child at a time to the bathroom on a 2 hour ground delay. It took just a few minutes but kept the toddlers from fussing and was so easy to do. We ultimately ended up swapping aircraft and another woman (who was a total stranger but a mom traveling without her kids) sat next to the oldest child across the aisle from the mom and the twins. I was a row back and I witnessed that woman sharing her iPhone, singing songs, and entertaining and helping the oldest child the WHOLE FLIGHT! From SFO to ATL – 5 hours. What a total saint. Completely revived my faith in humanity.
Sometimes we can be reminded that most people are good!
Eh being a Gold Member in one World Cathay Pacific am entitled to bring in one guest into business lounge. Saw another lady trying to enter, but was not entitled. So told the counter staff that she was my guest and she had a great time in HK CX business lounge. Easy thing to do 🙂