For the nth time in your flying experience, you didn’t get a seat next to a cute chick or a cool dude. Sometimes, it was a middle-aged woman knitting and you feared the pins would pierce your belly, at other times it would be a septuagenarian who liked to doze off on your shoulder. Anyhow, you made peace with the situation. But what was absolutely intolerable were the restless kids on the flight. The kind who liked to scream and pull their sibling’s hair every time their mom was looking away. The kind who always wanted to go to the loo every 15 minutes. Even worse, you had a howling infant next to you on your 8-hour flight. And the mother asked you to hold the fresh diaper as she removed the soiled one. Okay breathe.

Finally, someone has done something about it. Scoot Airlines, Singapore’s budget airline, has introduced a kids-free zone on their flight. By paying a little extra, you can upgrade to the quiet zone named as “Scoot in Silence” which is a 41-seat cabin where children under 12 are not allowed. Positioned right behind the business class in rows 21 to 25, the Scoot in Silence zone has more leg-space than the standard economy section.

In a survey, it was revealed that noisy restless children were the biggest source of irritation to passengers. They even surpassed smelly neighbours, rude crew, and drunken passengers. Earlier this year, it was AirAsia that introduced child-free zones. Now it’s Scoot that flies from Singapore to Sydney and Gold Coast.

As always, there is some opposition involved. The move has been seen as offensive by some. Tracey Spicer, a columnist at The Canberra Times Traveller, says,

“It’s treating children like they’re animals in a zoo…. You end up with all the families shoved down the back. It will make every flight a nightmare for families.”

Meanwhile Campbell Wilson, Scoot CEO, had this to say,

“No offence to our young guests, or those travelling with them, you still have the rest of the aircraft to choose from.”

We think the families wouldn’t mind being huddled up together. Infants have been known to behave better in the company of like-minded infants.

Is it unfair for families with kids? Or is it a boon for travellers who want a stress-free flight? What do you think?