A modest proposal: Family Class

When my daughter Sam was 18 months old, we made the mistake of flying from Albany, New York, to Las Vegas — nonstop. It was like traveling with a chimpanzee. Contained in a metal tube for six hours with no understanding of her personal space — or anyone else’s — she wanted to run up and down the aisle. And she screamed when we tried to distract her with all the toys we had lugged on board.

When we did walk up and down the aisle with her, she grabbed the other passengers’ drinks off their tray tables before we knew what was happening. She giggled and shrieked and tried to climb into other peoples’ rows. And at one point, she escaped my grasp and beat on the cockpit door. It was only six months after 9/11, and I expected a couple of F-14s to force us down in Wichita. And then I expected Congress to pass a bill forbidding children under the age of 5 to fly on commercial aircraft.

When we did land (in Las Vegas), I swore we would never get on an airplane again until Sam was 18, even if it meant driving home (or buying a home in Vegas and living there for the next 16-½ years).

We did fly home — on a red-eye, so she slept. And since then (Sam is now 8), we have traveled without offending fellow passengers (we hope).

But sitting in Dulles International Airport at 5:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday morning, trying to doze after a less-than-restful red-eye returning from a business trip, I was reminded again that young kids do not get the whole air travel thing. They don’t want to sit still, they don’t want to wait, they don’t want to be pulled from their warm beds at 4 a.m. to make a pre-dawn flight. On Dulles’ concourse C, one little girl screamed so loudly — from 5:30 a.m. until 7 a.m. when she boarded a flight with her parents (or were they her kidnappers? hard to tell) — that I was just about to start screaming too.

In a time where airlines are cutting back on everything from legroom to free toilets, I offer a modest proposal: Family class.

Not all flights would have Family class, just ones with the special retrofitted airplanes. On these planes, the rear third would be a wide-open bouncy-castle-type space. No seats, no seat belts, no luggage racks. Nothing but four walls, a floor, and a ceiling all lined with of soft, poofy cushion of air.

Turbulence? All the more fun as it helps kids bounce higher. Take off and landing? Who needs seatbelts when you’re surrounded by soft walls.

Between flights, this cabin would be misted with Chlorox.

Flight attendants would be teenagers and/or former preschool teachers, and they’d wear whistles. As for an in-flight movie, you bet. Nemo and Madagascar would show on a big screen TV that would slide down from the ceiling. Kids would just lie down on the soft floor with their blankies, stored back by the bathrooms during bouncy time.

On the ground, every concourse would have a soundproof Family room manned by more teenagers. And flights with Family class would never depart earlier than 9 a.m.

Then the middle third of the plane would be a first-class-like cabin for parents. Amenities would include free drinks, noise-cancellation headphones, or better yet, those industrial-strength ear protectors worn by the ground crew. Seats would recline fully and have footrests. Flight attendants would be trained in massage.

OK, so yes, the cost would be prohibitive — to both retrofit the airplanes and for the tickets. But some parents would definitely pay. And then they would ask the pilot to fly around the world twice while they slept.

As for the rest of us, we can always buy those industrial-strength ear protectors. The gift shops should sell them next to the travel blankets and neck pillows.