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Home » Family Travel » Child Scribbles On Airline Tray Table: Bad Parenting, Bad Cleaning Crew
Family TravelUnited Airlines

Child Scribbles On Airline Tray Table: Bad Parenting, Bad Cleaning Crew

Matthew Klint Posted onDecember 23, 2023 9 Comments

a drawing on a white board

After a woman found drawings all over her tray table on a United Airlines flight, you have to wonder what happened to both the parents and the cleaning crew.

Drawings On Tray Table Expose Bad Parenting, Bad Cleaning

A woman took to Twitter to complain about her bad United Airlines flight to St. Maarten and while her focus was on flight attendants, she also revealed her tray table had drawings all over it that had not been cleaned.

This @united flight was giving @SpiritAirlines Flight attendants were rude, a fight broke out, and surely no one bothered to clean my tray. Only Delta and JetBlue to St. Martin ever again! #unitedairlines #airlinenightmares pic.twitter.com/i1cD3rAFj1

— Anita Dolce Vita (@DolceFemmeAnita) December 21, 2023

Earlier this year I wrote about a mother who allowed her child to scribble with a marker all over the seat, tray table, wall, and window of her aircraft seat. She justified it by saying that it was using a washable marker:

Bratty Kid Draws All Over Airplane With Her Marker. This Is Not Okay.

“These are a great tool to pull out when the iPad has run its course. I prefer to let my toddler use these when I want him to go to sleep, because the iPad stimulates him and I find it’s harder to get him to sleep. And we all know a sleeping toddler on a long flight is a MAJOR WIN.”

Yeah…no.

It’s not that I cannot empathize somewhat with the situation. If you walked into my daughter’s room just a few months ago you would have seen scribbling all over the floors, desk, chair, dresser, wall, window, bed, books, and toys. She even managed to tag the ceiling (don’t ask me how…).

Rather than affirm her artistic creation, we disciplined her. And made her, even at the age of two years old, scrub it up.

Now she’s three and guess what? She doesn’t do it any longer. She knows that markers and crayons and colored pencils are only for paper.

The challenge with parenting is the careful balance required in utilizing consistent discipline while not breaking the spirit of the child. Both are manifestations of love and both work with each other to create a person that respects authority and recognizes the world does not revolve around them. This is true even at an early age.

But returning to the United flight, it almost seems more egregious because based on the detail of the drawings it appears this was done by an older child. That’s a major parenting failure.

But it is also a failure of the cleaning crew. Far too often I open my tray table and find food or other grime caked on it, as I recently did on another United flight:

a black rectangular object with a white cover

Are cabin cleaners simply not doing their job or does United not give them enough to clean trays between flights? A quick inspection and wipe down of each tray table seems pretty fundamental to me in cleaning cabin between flights…

CONCLUSION

Another reminder and another plea: please do not let your children draw on airplane equipment like tray tables. If they do, YOU should clean it up instead of leaving it for others to do. And as for United, it is time the carrier did a better job in cleaning tray tables between flights.


> Read More: Bratty Kid Draws All Over Airplane With Her Marker. This Is Not Okay.


image: @DolceFemmeAnita / X // Hat Tip: View From The Wing

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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9 Comments

  1. Derek Reply
    December 23, 2023 at 10:48 am

    In the good old days, the brat’s bottom would have been worn out had he/she pulled a stunt like that.

    Parents these days care more about being their kids’ friend and not doing their job of being a parent and raising them

    • Jance Reply
      December 23, 2023 at 11:09 pm

      Yup, exactly.

      Bad parenting one generation back.

    • Frank Reply
      July 13, 2024 at 7:32 am

      Yeah! And those were great times, being able to beat your child till they black out, smack your wife too. People are too weak now! #maga

  2. Lukas Reply
    December 23, 2023 at 10:50 am

    There goes the deep clean after every flight during covid times… All they probably did on that flight was the cross the seat belts so it appears cleaned, LOL.

    • Tony N. Reply
      December 23, 2023 at 7:07 pm

      By the way, there was no such thing as deep clean during Covid. I have never seen it.

  3. Dave Edwards Reply
    December 23, 2023 at 12:42 pm

    No chance for a “deep clean” with the turnaround time on many flights. If you think your tray table is clean you are sadly mistaken.

    That said, no one should be eating directly off a tray table.

    And yes, the parent is anything but.

  4. John Reply
    December 23, 2023 at 1:09 pm

    The kid’s parents are idiots. There is no other explanation.

  5. Jerry Reply
    December 23, 2023 at 3:06 pm

    Who gets in a fight on a flight to SXM? Did one passenger steal the other’s sunset dinner reservation in St Barths?

  6. Tony N. Reply
    December 23, 2023 at 7:06 pm

    I like sitting at the back but unfortunately, this is where all the kids are, good or bad. I try to ignore them even if they’re banging on the back of my seat, on purpose or not. … It’s also the airline’s / flight attendant’s fault if they allow this to happen, to damage their property.

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