Mijn Klacht:

Dear Sir/Madam, I would like to express my deep disappointment with the service during my return flight with Arke. I was flying with an infant. Luckily it was a night flight so he actually slept for 99% of the flight. The 1% he was awake was during dinner service and landing. And unfortunately this brought an immense stress to me. I will describe what happened. The first incident was during clearing of dinner service. My little one slept through the service but woke up from the lights and the noise during clearing. I had to have him in my arms and keep him as much as i can from screaming and disturbing everyone around. This was going on while i still had the traytable down with the dirty tray on it. The attendant was cleaning the people already close in front of us. He kept on screaming. The cleaning cart was already parked next to me and she was cleaning the seats in front and opposite of me in the front. As my baby was jumping and crying i picked up the tray and reached out to give it to her so that he didnt kick everything on the floor. To my dismay the attendant looked at me with a very seriously surprised look meaning how do i dare to ask her to take my tray before she got to me in the proper order ( maybe 4 people before ) and gave me a hand gesture that i needed to wait. Which of course created further stress trying to keep an infant calm while he is trying to jump out of my arms and holding a dirty tray and trying to keep it from tipping over. Everyone with a small baby knows that one second is enough to prevent a crying escalation to a point of not calming down for a long time after that.
Second incident was during landing. My baby was during the whole flight in the middle seat. Naturally i had placed his diaper bag and my hand bag under the seat in front of him since this would give me more space if i didnt have a bag in front of me. The flight was 8 hours long and all the attendants have already passed by few times and have been aware of it. During landing i had already strapped the baby around me of course trying to keep him calm since i had to wake him up for it and we all know baby that hasnt slept enough is a cranky baby. The attendants were going around doing final checks before landing, literally few minutes before they needed to be sitting as well. The same attendant pointed to me that i need to move the bags that were under and in front of the middle seat since the baby was now in my lap for landing. I understand very well that this is a standard procedure. But she saw how i was struggling to keep the child from choking himself from not wanting to be strapped up and on top of that told me that i needed to move the bag from there. I tried reached down but i couldnt reach it. Then she looked at me with such an anger that i wasnt succeeding and told me: ” Can you not use your legs to pick it up and move it?” I simply couldnt believe my ears!!! And i told her: “Well clearly i can not! You are standing here and watching me try and seeing that i cant!” I had to unstrap the baby quickly because she was rushing me, figure out the bag and then strap him again. And this could have been easily avoided had she told me about the bag before i had to strap the baby, or she could have simply helped me with moving the bag. I have flown hundreds of times with countless airlines, but I have to say I have never experienced such a rude, unhelpful service, that almost came across as if we were the biggest burden on this flight since there was a baby. We have another flight with Arke in 2 weeks and I am absolutely not looking forward to it since most likely I will be treated again as a second grade human being since I have a baby with me.

Gewenste Oplossing:

I would like to see polite flight attendants that are there to accommodate the passengers when they need assistance and who are trying to forsee for solutions before they are even needed. Just like all other airlines I have flown with before, no grumpy and angry attitude coming from the flight attendants.