ATLANTA - A woman said she and her toddler son were kicked off a plane after she refused a flight attendant's request to medicate her son to get him to quiet down and stop saying "Bye bye, plane."


Kate Penland, of suburban Atlanta, said she and her 19-month-old son, Garren, were flying from Atlanta to Oklahoma last month on a Continental Express flight that made a stop in Houston.

As the plane was taxiing in Houston en route to Oklahoma, "he started saying 'Bye, bye plane,' Penland told WSB-TV in Atlanta. The flight attendant objected, she said.

"At the end of her speech, she leaned over the gentleman beside me and said, 'It's not funny anymore. You need to shut your baby up,'" Penland told WSB-TV in Atlanta.

When Penland asked the woman if she was joking, she said the stewardess replied, "You know, it's called baby Benadryl."

"And I said, 'Well, I'm not going to drug my child so you have a pleasant flight,'" Penland told the TV station.

Penland said other passengers began speaking up on her behalf, and the flight attendant announced they were turning around and that Penland and Garren were going to be taken off the plane.

Penland and her son were let off the plane and did not complete the trip to Oklahoma, said Kristy Nicholas, spokeswoman for Express Jet Airlines, which flies as Continental Express on behalf of Continental Airlines.

Attempts by the Associated Press to reach Penland under a telephone listing that matched her last name were unsuccessful.

"I was crying, I was upset and I was thinking, 'What am I going to do? I don't have anything with me, I don't have any more diapers for the baby, no juice, no milk," Penland told WSB.

Nicholas said, "We received Ms. Penland's letter expressing her concerns and intend to investigate its contents."

Yeah...My one year old annoying kid is much more important than the other 60 adult passengers

Tip for parents...Drug 'em up or leave them home

Signed....Childless

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Dr. Spaceman: Now Jenna, medically speaking for your height your weight puts you what we call the "disgusting" range. Fortunately there are solutions. For example, crystal meth has been shown to be very effective. How important is tooth retention to you?

LOL Easy, THAT appears quite Easy for you to say!

They should have a plane designed for babies 'n toddlers. A Disney in the Air!

of course someone childless would say drug them up or leave them home! you are the adult - why don't you drug yourself up to knock you out so you don't have to be disturbed by the child who was only saying "bye bye plane". that's ridiculous. children on a plane aren't anymore annoying than the drunk adults, or the chatty cathy sitting next to you, or the guy that is disturbed by everything, the jokester, etc. basically - flights are just annoying. it's called nyquil. use it.

I disagree with you there kmf...An annoying child trumps all other annoying things in the world imo

I'm sure the baby wasn't exactly whispering...Cute to the mom I'm sure....As bad as nails on a chalkboard to those sitting close by

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Dr. Spaceman: Now Jenna, medically speaking for your height your weight puts you what we call the "disgusting" range. Fortunately there are solutions. For example, crystal meth has been shown to be very effective. How important is tooth retention to you?

I agree. Parents who can't control their children in public need to not take those kids out in public.

Being a parent doesn't mean you have the right to inflict your loud children on the rest of the world. It's rude as hell and completely inconsiderate.

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i'm not saying it isn't rude or annoying...i have children and it annoys me. but i am saying that it isn't any more annoying than the rest of the idiots on the plane. it's not cause to turn the plane around and deplane them. if he was jumping up and down in his chair, running up and down the aisle and whacking passengers in the head wih one of those playskool hammers...then yes. kick them off. i prefer midair. there was a kid doing that on my last flight...i just politely told the mom that she could get control of her child or i was going to knock the crap out of her. she complied. then i took my nyquil and passed out.

When do other passengers yell the same thing over and over and over again? If they do this, please tell me which airline you fly so that I can make a note to avoid it in the future.

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It's a friendlier OKCTalk!

That hasn't happened. But I listened to a guy talk about his damn coin collection to another passenger across the aisle for a good hour once. That was annoying. Why would some stranger care about your coins? I was stuck in the middle of a travelling knitting club or something once. Those ladies were sweet but never shut up. The soccer team that was coming back from vegas and were drunk as skunks were fun. It was the middle of the night and they were as giggly as school girls. And kept making drunken tripping trips to the bathroom. The business guy that sat next to me and typed a novel was great too. He would click click click on his laptop and then giggle to himself or sigh dramatically. I just don't have good flights I guess.

Belligerent children are one of my biggest pet peeves, but it doesn't sound like the other passengers were annoyed if they were sticking up for the lady and her kid (something NOBODY would do if the kid were really being a brat)...So they bork up all those people's flight schedules because the flight attendant had a bug up her butt?

'bye bye plane' seems innocent enough... but the non-stop crying baby just drives me insane. I'll never forget groggily getting up to share my Infant Tylenol with a clueless mom who couldn't figure out that the poor kid had an earache from the pressure... the tugging of the ear and continual wailing should have been the first clue.. anyhow, that baby slept the next 6 hours while my baby was wide awake after being awoken from his shrill cries. Luckily he wasn't crying but that was a lonnngggg flight.. CA to Jamaica... that umbrella drink on the beach never was more appreciated after that flight!

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" You've Been Thunder Struck ! "

Speaking of long flights to Jamaica...Remind me to tell you about mine sometime. I was up for almost 60 hours by the time I got there. Great story...Just too long to type out

60 hours??...I know this is an anonymous forum, but I'm not sure you should be telling old Meth stories on here either Oh Gawd

As for the bratty kids...I would do what every other husband would do.....And have my wife say something

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Dr. Spaceman: Now Jenna, medically speaking for your height your weight puts you what we call the "disgusting" range. Fortunately there are solutions. For example, crystal meth has been shown to be very effective. How important is tooth retention to you?

60 hours! That puts my trip to shame! I do remember our flight was cancelled coming home and we sat on the airport floor for hours.

On the way to Jamaica my son got bit in the eye by a red ant ... you should have seen me running through Miami airport at 4:00 am trying to find a pharmacy/store to buy Benadryl... looking back, I was pretty crazy to take an infant to Jamaica... but actually once we were there it was fabulous.

In case anyone wants to take their kids.. they offer 24 hour nanny care..

Beaches Boscobel Resort & Golf Club - Jamaica all-inclusive Resort

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" You've Been Thunder Struck ! "

I don't know about that...I wasn't worried about anything else other than getting there. You were worried about your child. It was my girlfriend's fault anyway...So me keeping my cool and getting us there for her brother's wedding despite her best (albeit unintentional) efforts without blowing a gasket earned me very high marks with her and her family.

IN THE EYE???

sorry, eyelid.. but his eye swelled shut.. I was frantic..

I forgot to mention that we couldn't land on time either because Fidel Castro was in the air over Jamaica and we had to circle forever... sigh.. traveling stinks sometimes...

I've decided to drive to ports and go on a ship instead of flying as much.

They say you can tell the true character of someone in how they respond to traveling woes, ie lost luggage, delayed flights etc..

you did splendidly!

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" You've Been Thunder Struck ! "

I didn't have a choice...No WAY was I losing a week on the beach at a resort for couples only, no kids, no singles...Just endless daiquiris and Red Stripe.

But yeah...Major brownie points.

Castro huh? Who's that?

What kind of precedent does that set? She didn't do anything wrong. The flight attendant decided her kid was annoying and they kicked her off the plane without her luggage. Pretty ridiculous.

Keep in mind this is just the angry mother's side of the story. I know that anytime I point out my boyfriend's children's bad behavior he gets defensive and angry (he eventually sees my point though as I am always right LOL). My experience is that most parent's are this way. If you got the flight attendent's side of this it may be an entire different version. I find it pretty hard to believe that "other passengers began speaking up on her behalf". I've never seen anyone on a plane say "let the kid keep talking loudly and screaming" give me a break.

The other passengers are starting to speak out and back penland's story. I just clipped a piece of it.

"It was ludicrous," one of the passengers, Stacey Watts, told 11Alive News on Thursday, from her home near Oklahoma City. "I even heard somebody from the back of the plane call out there, 'You telling me there's a switch on kids all these years?'"

Watts was in Row 6, just behind Penland and her son who were in Row 3.

Penland said the flight attendant then addressed all the passengers.

"She put her hand on her hip and informed everyone that it was her plane and she was not going to listen to it. And she then went to the flight attendant station, was there for a few minutes, came back and informed the cabin that we were turning around. And she looked at me and said, 'You and your baby are getting off the plane.' And we did, we turned around and security came and escorted my child and me off the plane."

Sounds like a good old case of **Hangman Time**

P _ S

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Dr. Spaceman: Now Jenna, medically speaking for your height your weight puts you what we call the "disgusting" range. Fortunately there are solutions. For example, crystal meth has been shown to be very effective. How important is tooth retention to you?

I happened to catch a video of the Mommy of this lil boy on Good Morning America......and to my amazement, Kate Penland, happens to be Katie Dunbar, who dated my son, here in Oklahoma, for several years! She lived with us! Graduated from Ninnekah HS in 2000.

Small world. LOL

Yesterday, my daughter was on a flight from Houston to Oklahoma City and a woman was caught smoking a cigarette while they were waiting to take off.

All they did to her was open the door, allow some security from the airline on and gave her a warning!

IMHO, she put the passengers at far more risk than a repetitive child. I'm a smoker, and a frequent traveler, and I agree that children on airplanes can be annoying. However, they are no worse than the man speaking loudly on his cell phone or someone who ate a 3 lb bean burrito the night before!

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