Airline creates child-free area on the holiday flight

2023-08-29 22:05:37

There should be no more noise or shouting in the first twelve rows of seats on an airplane – not even from small children. The Dutch-Turkish airline Corendon is causing a stir with a special idea for its winter holiday flights from Amsterdam to Curaçao: the front part of the A350 aircraft is to become an adults-only area – a total of 93 standard seats and nine more spaced seats available to all passengers reserved for those over the age of 16. Behind it remain more than 300 seats, also for children.

It is a division concept that has long been established in the holiday hotel industry with family hostels and adults-only hotels – so far not on flights. Corendon founder Atilay Uslu explained the new offer by saying that one always strives “to respond to the different needs of our customers”.

Parents should also enjoy flight

With the adults-only area, they want to “do justice to travelers who are looking for a little more peace and quiet during the flight”. From Uslu’s point of view, this is a sensible division, even parents with small children could then “enjoy the flight without having to worry if their children make a little more noise”.

But these words did not prevent a sharp discussion in online forums. On the one hand there are frequent flyers who report how an infant kept the entire business class awake screaming on a long-haul flight. On the other hand there are those who lament an increasingly child-hostile society, in between those who see it as profiteering: the airline company is just creating a new reason to collect surcharges.

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The reservation of an adult seat should cost 45 euros, a seat with more room for the legs even 100 euros. Uslu advertises that Corendon is only “the first Dutch airline” with this idea. However, this is not the first airline in the world. Malaysia Airlines once closed the upper deck of an A380 plane to children on some routes, and other operators in Asia also tried different areas on board. However, these concepts did not become established in the long term.