Having paid off one high-profile litigant and facing protests by men’s and fathers’ rights organizations, British Airways has finally done what it should have been doing all along. It’s established gender-neutral policies about who can sit next to unaccompanied minors on international flights. Better late than never, I suppose, but BA shareholders might be wondering why it took the geniuses in top management so long to figure out the obvious – that preventing men from sitting next to unaccompanied minors discriminates and stigmatizes men. Read about it here (Telegraph, 8/21/10).
It took a lawsuit by Luxembourg resident Mirko Fischer and a £2,900 payout to him to goad BA into changing its policy. That came after men’s and fathers’ rights protesters had long excoriated the company for its anti-male discrimination.
BA, which carried out a review of its policy following the case, now says “seating of unaccompanied minors is managed in a safe but non discriminatory manner”.
Mr Fischer, who lives in Luxembourg, said he was “absolutely delighted” by the policy change. He has donated his compensation money to Kidscape and Orphans in the Wild, two child protection charities.
Predictably, BA now characterizes its anti-male discrimination as a “service” it offered to children. Stated another way, it provided the “service” of holding men like Fischer up to public ridicule for no reason other than their sex. Nice.
Beyond that, it provided the “service” of creating a problem where there was none. Has anyone ever seen a case in which a man abused a child he was sitting next to on a commercial flight? I haven’t, although I have seen one in which a woman is accused of doing so.
And beyond even that, BA provided the “service” of forcing unaccompanied minors to sit beside women, who by the way, do far more child abuse than do men. U.S. figures from the HHS Administration for Children and Families show that every year, mothers and other women do more than twice the abuse and neglect that fathers and other men do.
So, in addition to being discriminatory against men, BA’s policy didn’t make sense. If anything, it might have increased the danger to children flying BA.
BA’s official statement on its change in policy is mostly incomprehensible, but it seems that it’s going to start setting aside a section for unaccompanied minors and dropping its policy of discriminating against men in seating. Again, why they couldn’t have figured that out long ago and without the assistance of a lawsuit, I’ll never understand.
Apparently Qantas and Air New Zealand are the only airlines that still hew to the “all men are perverts and no women are” policy that BA has just abandoned. So the next time you have an opportunity to fly Qantas or Air New Zealand, don’t.
Thanks to John for the heads-up.