Another carrier experiments with child-free zones on planes
But is there a better defence against noise pollution?
By B.R.
A FEW years ago a spate of airlines introduced child-free areas on their planes, in order to appeal to business travellers. Now another carrier has joined the list. This week, IndiGo, an Indian operator, said it was designating rows 1-4 and 11-14 (which includes the exit row) as “quiet zones”, out of bounds to children younger than 12. According to the International Business Times, the rows have extra leg space, better armrests and seat cushioning. It goes without saying that they also cost more.
It seems a peculiarly Asian phenomenon. Other airlines to have tested the concept include Scoot, a Singaporean budget carrier and AirAsia X of Malaysia. Back in 2013, Skift, a travel website, polled the big American airlines and found no appetite among them to follow suit. Although it must be said the idea has gained more traction inside The Economist’s editorial meetings. Indeed, in 1998, we wrote a leader on the subject, arguing:
We live in increasingly intolerant times. Signs proliferate demanding no smoking, no spitting, no parking, even no walking…
If intolerance really has to be the spirit of this age, The Economist would like to suggest restrictions on another source of noise pollution: children. Lest you dismiss this as mere prejudice, we can even produce a good economic argument for it. Smoking, driving and mobile phones all cause what economists call “negative externalities”. That is, the costs of these activities to other people tend to exceed the costs to the individuals of their proclivities. The invisible hand of the market fumbles, leading resources astray…Children, just like cigarettes or mobile phones, clearly impose a negative externality on people who are near them…
The solution is obvious. All airlines, trains and restaurants should create child-free zones. Put all those children at the back of the plane and parents might make more effort to minimise their noise pollution.
Perhaps deservedly, we received a forcefully argued letter from one of those we were seeking to isolate:
Sir, you are wrong when you say that children are like cigarettes or mobile telephones.
No one has to smoke or use a mobile phone, but everyone has to be a child and you were once one too. You need children to pay for the pensions of miserable old people like you.
Now pick on someone your own sise (sic). Yours, Jessica Morley (aged 6)
Nonetheless, there is no question that being near a screaming child, particularly someone else’s, is miserable. Indeed, we are hard-wired to find it stressful. According to a neurological study from the University of Oxford, a baby’s cry stimulates areas of the brain that trigger an immediate fight or flight response, in a way that an animal mewing or an adult crying does not. That, says Christine Parsons, one of the researchers, is why it is impossible to ignore: “When you hear a baby on a plane, you’re immediately alert, even if you don’t want to hear it”.
Yet it is worth making two points about such quiet zones, particularly the limited ones advocated by AirAsia X and its ilk. The first is their futility. Just ask anyone old enough to remember being assigned a seat in the last “non-smoking” row of a cabin before the smoking section began: an open-plan plane is not easily segregated. A couple of rows between you and a screaming baby will not make much difference.
The second is that there is a much better defence against the pollution. Anyone who travels for business, and who has work to do on the plane, will know to bring noise-cancelling headphones. These cannot be used during take-off or landing, when flyers will have no choice but to listen to any bawling bairns. (Gulliver usually falls back on another type of protection for such moments: empathy.) But once in the air with the laptop open, business travellers have no excuse to be bothered by events around them, be it a screaming baby or the inane chatter of a family jetting off on its holidays.
Incidentally, Gulliver has spent hours formulating and field-testing an intricate theory of the perfect music to listen to on a plane while doing work. Many hours of over-thinking have led me to four golden rules. First, the music must be instrumental. It is hard to deposit words on a page when competing ones are entering your eardrums. Second, it must be familiar; it should be like an old pair of slippers that protect you from your surroundings without you noticing them. Third, it must be at a constant level: no quiet bits, when cabin sounds can seep through and break the spell, and not too many crescendos that might startle you. Finally, it must be neither too lively in tempo, nor too soporific.
It can be therefore said that the perfect work-while-you-fly album is “Journey in Satchidananda” by Alice Coltrane. Coltrane used a drone in her music with almost the exact frequency as an aircraft’s engine, which has the effect of cancelling it out. Gulliver accepts that experimental jazz is, for many people, the musical equivalent of nails being scratched across a blackboard. Still, it is better that than the yowl of a distressed youngster.
