Should Families Split Up When Traveling?
Over the course of the week, news and stories of Air France flight 447 continue to unfold. The terrible tragedy has captivated the attention of the world and brought many questions to the forefront. As I was starting my morning yesterday, I turned on Good Morning America and caught a segment on one such question being raised: Should families travel together on flights or split up? To be honest, I had never even considered this question. In reality, plane crashes are so rare. No one questions if families should be splitting up and driving two cars when they are all going somewhere together, and fatal car crashes are far more common.
The segment continued to recount many different stories and opinions on this subject. A young European couple, with two young children, took two separate flights to use up airline miles. The young mother and her son were passengers on that fateful Air France flight. The father and daughter were on a separate flight, which raised another question: Is it better to live without half your family? For this family, safety was not the issue for splitting up and, sadly, their lives have been forever changed as a result.
Other stories included a woman who lost both her parents in a plane crash when she was a girl. Today, when her family (her husband and two kids) go on a trip together, they all fly together. When she and her husband travel without the children, they travel separately. Another family profiled also always travels together, but the parents travel separately — even if they are going to dinner with friends at a local restaurant on a Saturday night. The segment continued for several minutes, even spotlighting airline employees and other frequent travelers and their opinions on the subject.
I found the segment to be very interesting. I didn’t fly too much as a child, but we always flew together as a family. I wonder if my parents ever thought about splitting up on flights. Perhaps when I have children of my own, this will be something I will start to consider. I began to wonder what other precautions I never consider that many people do. Over the past three years, travel has become a more regular, normal thing in my life — something I do without even thinking twice.
Does your family split up when traveling? What other safety considerations do you put in place before trips? Have you considered this and other precautions in the past? What are your thoughts?
My heart truly goes out to all those who have lost family and friends in the recent tragedy.
-Kim Krol, eFlyer editor, circulation and public relations executive
