This Airline Has an Adults-Only Zone on Select Flights. Should Others Do the Same?

11.09.2023 - 15:45 / afar.com / Henry Harteveldt / Atilay Uslu

When European low-cost Corendon Airlines announced on August 23 that it would reserve the front rows of its Amsterdam-Curação flights for passengers 16-years-old or older, the news resurfaced the age-old debate about how to balance the needs of traveling families with those who are flying without kids.

Corendon’s fleet consists of Boeing 737-800s which have 33 rows with 3 seats on each side of the aisle. The adults-only section is made up of 9 larger premium seats and 93 standard seats in the first 17 rows of the plane. Passengers over 16-years-old can pay an additional fee of €45 (US$48 based on current conversion rates) per flight to be seated in this section in economy, and an additional €100 (US$107, based on current conversion rates) per flight for a premium seat.

Henry Harteveldt, travel industry analyst at the Atmosphere Research Group, sees this “as a revenue opportunity, a way to generate incremental income. But I wonder if there will be backlash from the public.”

According to Atilay Uslu, founder of Corendon, allocating half a plane to adults only “can have a positive effect on parents traveling with small children. They can enjoy the flight without worrying if their children make more noise.”

Not all parents agree.

When the news was shared in a discussion forum on Bébé Voyage, a global network and resource for traveling families, parents’ reactions ran the gamut. Some felt that drunk or otherwise unruly adults onboard pose more of a problem (without having the understandable excuse of being children). Others agreed with the spirit of Corendon’s new policy but offered ways to refine it, while a few applauded it wholeheartedly.

Assuming that Corendon’s aim is to create “a shielded environment that contributes to a calm and relaxed flight,” as the company stated in its press release, other questions arise.

“It’s not like people won’t hear crying babies from the front ... not sure what the benefit really is,” says Sarah Maltzman Shah, director of operations for the Jewish Fertility Foundation and mother of a 6-year-old from Washington, D.C.

“This is useless on most domestic flights because they’re so small, the whole plane will hear the baby,” concurs Brittany Alexandra Barnes, a school librarian currently at home with her 1- and 3-year-old children in Atlanta. “I’ve been on some very large planes, like Emirates, where you board and deplane into different zones at the same time. This would make sense for a plane [of that size].”

Ivana Ivanovic, a marketing consultant and writer based in Oakland, California, and a mother to a 4-year-old, points out that “acknowledging the existence of children and dealing with their noises, cries, and pranks on an occasional flight should be a joy—like it is in