A crying child may be what no one wants while flying on an airplane. It’s unfortunate for Ashley Dowell and her husband when that was exactly what happened during their family trip in 2019. The couple hailed from Rockford, Illinois, were taking a family vacation to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Aboard the 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐰𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐀𝐢𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 with her were her husband, her 7-year-old, her 4-year-old and her 9-month-old baby girl. Alayna, her youngest, began crying instantly when the plane took off.
Flying for the first time may be scary for anyone, especially a tiny baby girl. There is a lot to take into consideration, like the extreme heights and the turbulence. The child may be startled due to constant movement as a plane gliding through the air isn’t typically as calming as being rocked back and forth.
This family’s sweet baby was crying loudly while she was aboard her very first flight. Some of the other passengers seemed to be understanding of the situation, but some showed 𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞. While traveling in the air, a male flight attendant came over to 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭 the family and grabbed their crying child. He needed to calm her down.
The Dowell family was off to a rocky start for their vacation and they just wanted to help wipe Alayna’s tears away and calm her down. Luckily for them, a flight attendant on board the airplane made the decision to come over and do what he could to 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐜𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 any longer.
During an interview with Good Morning America in May 2019, Dowell talked about her experience on the airplane with her consistently crying baby girl. “We’re feeling like we’re those people on the plane with the baby that’s crying and everyone wants to kick you off the plane,” she told the news outlet.
The couple had tried everything they could to calm their little girl down, but nothing seemed to work. The crying had been going on for 𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝟏𝟓 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬 before a flight attendant decided he was going to try to put an end to it.
Flight attendant 𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐲 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐭, 32, had held Alayna when the family first got on the plane and needed to put their bags away in the overhead compartments. He came over to the family and offered to help and hold her once again, as her crying had still not let up. Dowell said: “We were in such a small, confined area, we were really 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞,”
“He was so good with her, and so nurturing and caring, and pretty instantaneously, she calmed down.”
It took around 15 minutes for her little girl to fully calm down as Hunt held her and walked up and down the plane aisles. “He was 𝐫𝐮𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐠 her back, walking up and down the aisle like it was just a day in the park,” Dowell said about the way Hunt calmed her crying child. “Once he calmed her down, he handed her back to us, and then we were able to get her back to sleep.”
Dowell posted about the 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 on Facebook, where she was later able to reconnect with Hunt. She wrote about the 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝-𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐭 in a social media post on May 22, 2019. “There is so much negativity in this world, we need more stories like this shared! It would mean so much to me. There is still good in this world.”, she wrote.
Hunt talked about the reason why he helped out the family. Hunt said:”First of all, I love babies, and I want like a hundred of them,”. The flight had just taken off and the baby had not been able to stop crying. Hunt explained how he couldn’t do anything for a while, as it was a 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐲 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 to stay seated during the first few minutes of take-off. “He said: There was nothing I could do at the time because the seat belt sign was on, and so as soon as they turned off the seat belt sign, I went straight to her,”.
Reportedly, Hunt got creative and made a rattler out of pretzels with a lid on it to help distract her. The fight attendant talked about how he knew he needed to help out the infant’s family. Hunt said: “In a world full of hate, I like to be a shining light to someone who needs it,”
“I could tell in that particular moment her and her husband kind of needed a little light.”
The sweet flight attendant saw a family in need and decided to help out. He walked their baby up and down the aisles as he worked on 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧. Finally, the baby girl quieted down as she was handed back to her family — with a fun vacation ahead of them.
Source: Good Morning America, Apost
