Children shouldn't be seen, or heard

You know the scene... a harried mother tries to shut one child up, while the other child happily kicks the seat in front. Sit near this and tensions are running high before you've even seen the safety demonstration.

It turns out not everyone hates it. In good news for paranoid parents, two thirds of our air traveller respondents disagreed with the statement 'I get frustrated when sitting next to or near children'. But travellers in some markets are quite intolerant... who hates it most?

Britons were found to be most intolerant of children on planes with 55% agreeing they find sitting near the smallest travellers to be frustrating. They were closely followed by Hong Kongers (52% agreed). Least likely to get frustrated were German travellers with only 15% agreeing.

Looking at the results by gender, it is not too surprising to see that overall women are far more tolerant of air-borne kids. However, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), 48% of women agreed they find sitting near children frustrating and only 24% of men did.

George Christodoulides, Managing Director of Synovate in the UAE, said this may, in part, be due to large families and gender roles.

"When it comes to supervising children men tend to be fairly hands-off, while women travellers may be so busy empathising with harassed mothers that they are not really able to relax themselves."

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> Transactional travel or sky-high service?

> The seat of power

> Up in the air about intimacy

> Air travel to nose dive?

> How can an airline fly high?

> About the Synovate global air travel survey