Mumbai :  Following the news of Air Asia X and Scoot airlines implementing child-free zones on their aircrafts, global travel search site Skyscanner undertook a survey amongst 1000 Indian travellers to find out if they thought it was fair to make certain rows child-free.   The survey discovered that an overwhelming 73% of Indians agreed that it was high time that airlines start banning children under 12 from certain sections of planes.  In fact, more men were in favour of the move with close to 400 male travellers welcoming such zones on-board flights as compared with 330 women.

The child-free cabin zones come with “special ambient lighting” to provide a “more relaxing atmosphere” and are priced more than regular seats. When asked if they would pay extra to sit in a child-free zone on board an aircraft, 43% of travellers said they disagreed with the concept of an ‘adult only’ section and thus wouldn’t pay more.  However, an interesting revelation of the survey was that 2 out of the 5 male travellers were ready to pay 10% more as they felt that co passengers with kids shouldn’t be made to sit next to them as they are noisy.

In fact 70% of men rated ‘peace’ and ‘quiet’ as ‘very’ important to them in-flight as compared with 66% of women travellers. The survey further revealed that women seemed to empathize with families with young children with 12% of women saying that noise didn’t seem to bother them whilst travelling.

Kavitha Gnanamurthy, Skyscanner’s Marketing Manager for India, commented, “An unperturbed travel experience is important for most of us. Thus it comes as no surprise that Indian travellers would like to see child-free zones on planes particularly men who are less patient and hassled by noisy children.  Our survey highlights the fact that women in contrast were against banning children on certain sections of aircrafts as they felt that it was impractical to expect children to remain quiet throughout a flight.”