[eeks]

Parent of 3 kids that fly a lot here. Airlines force you to buy a full seat as soon as your child turns 2. This woman was most likely forced to buy a full ticket for her child.

This is properly inacceptable. I don't understand why this woman complied.

I would not have in her situation and would have made a terrible scene had I been asked to relinquish a seat I paid for.

[rlucas]

Except, that mother almost certainly knew of the recent excesses of violence played out on behalf of, if not explicitly the direction of, United Airlines, and made a judgment call about reducing risk that her child would be beaten up by a cop or air-steward (or that her child would be taken from her in a strange city if she were arrested).

As much as United shed crocodile tears over the David Dao beat-up incident, the more power-hungry / Milgram-normalized flight crews probably secretly appreciate the implicit threat of violence that now accompanies their seating suggestions.