This empathetic plane passenger isn’t worried about joining the mile cry club.
Children throwing tantrums on airplanes can understandably cause agita among passengers, but one female flyer is being praised for her empathetic response to a tyke who was bawling incessantly for hours.
“Let’s normalize being good humans while traveling,” the cry-witness, named Samantha Rae, wrote in the caption to a TikTok video with over 1.4 million views.
Rae, who is a mom herself according to her TikTok page, explained in the video’s text that the baby had “been crying non-stop for like two hours.”
However, instead of reacting with a sourpuss like in many crying baby reaction vids, the TikTokker sympathized with the parents, who she acknowledged were the hardest hit by the infant’s inflight meltdown.
“She sounds so uncomfortable, and her parents are working so hard to calm her down,” Rae lamented. “They are probably feeling so much anxiety and pressure right now. People behind them are talking about the baby screaming.”
At that point, the flyer said she tried to soothe the baby by “playing peekaboo,” but it only “helped for a minute.”
The passenger then slapped on some jumbo headphones and watched her inflight entertainment, which she said successfully blocked out the wailing.
“It’s that easy,” declared Rae, who is seen sporting headphones in the footage.
Commenters were quick to laud the content creator for her mature and understanding reaction to the ordeal.
“Thank you for not adding to the chaos and making the parents feel bad!” said one fellow mother. “As a mom of two young ones, I’m always worried on flights about upsetting seatmates!”
“Those poor parents, thank you for handling it like an adult,” another admired.
“Never in my life have I been annoyed by a baby. Annoyed by adults? Almost daily,” wrote a third.
Another commenter chimed in, saying: “I always say as adults we have the option to wear headphones, that baby and parents are suffering more than anyone else on the plane!”
Unfortunately, not every passenger is so empathetic when a baby throws a tantrum at 30,000 feet.
In August, a man on a Southwest Airlines flight to Orlando was ridiculed after responding to a screaming baby by paradoxically throwing a tantrum himself.
“I paid for a ticket to have a f–king comfortable flight,” the passenger raged. “That child has been crying for 40 minutes!”
