A mum says she was left ‘gobsmacked’ at TUI’s response after being told not to breastfeed her baby on a Manchester Airport flight.
Chelsea Williams was left feeling discriminated against and humiliated when she was told by the crew that she couldn’t breastfeed her five-week-old baby during take off. The 28-year-old was on a flight from to Spain on July 30 when a flight attendant left her embarrassed and close to tears.
The mum-of-two was travelling with her husband Tom, their baby and their two-year-old toddler on their first holiday together. However, during take-off she was approached by a TUI crew member who told her breastfeeding wasn’t permitted during take off and landing for the ‘comfort’ of other passengers.
This left Chelsea and her two children distressed. Before the trip, Chelsea had researched the best ways to keep a baby calm on the flight, which included feeding the baby during take off and landing.
Chelsea said: “We purposely chose a short flight as it was our first time travelling with two children, we didn’t want to go anywhere more than a couple of hours. We were trying to make the experience as least stressful as we could, we were really nervous before going.
To make things easier the family even selected to sit at the rear of the aircraft so they would be close to the baby change, and to avoid stares from other passengers if the baby was crying. Before take off the baby was buckled into the infant safety belt which was connected to Chelsea’s and the baby started to fall asleep as she was feeding.
She said: “The night before we were due to fly home I was getting anxious to travel again in case we had a similar experience with feeding, so my husband messaged customer service at TUI to ask if it was okay for me to feed during take-off and landing, just so we knew where we stood in case the problem did arise again.
“The response was that they would advise that we didn’t feed in case we made other people feel uncomfortable, which was absolutely shocking, I didn’t expect that response at all, I expected to hear a policy maybe, or a safety regulation.