A forgotten Baby. What Would Jeff Cooper think?

[federali]

You may have heard by now that a mother on a Saudi Arabian commercial flight managed to forget her baby in the boarding area and the plane was well into its flight before said mother realized she'd forgotten the baby. The moderators here would ban me for life plus a day if I were to write what I'm thinking. Yes, it was necessary to turn the plane around and return to the airport.

But then, another thought occurred to me: Those of you with law enforcement backgrounds or if you have received any SD training, you should be familiar with the late Jeff Cooper's timeless lesson plan on mindset: Condition White, Condition Yellow, Condition Orange, Condition Red. Condition White is relaxed, unaware and unprepared, the mental state, which allows you to not recognize an approaching situation or emergency in a timely manner. This airline incident points out that all the passengers in the boarding area where in Condition White: they boarded their flight and it didn't register on anyone that a baby had been forgotten.

Then, there's the gate crew, the people who board you with the assistance of a local PA system, being sure to synchronize its use with the general amplified terminal announcements so that you can comprehend neither. Once again, these people allowed the plane to board, closed the gate and went about their business.

I have no doubt that if Jeff Cooper were alive today and teaching, he'd use this forgotten-baby incident as a sterling example of mass Condition White, exactly where anyone who would use deadly force to defend himself does not want to be.

 

[amazingflapjack]

She either has a mental problem-maybe as simple as fear of flying (stress) or she had planned to leave her baby-which does not appear to be the case. JM2CW.

 

[LVSteve]

You think that's bad?

Recently, a British guy flew from Prague to England on his buddy's passport. They had been sharing a room while away and he picked up the wrong one. Apparently four or five different security and airline checks failed to notice that the ticket and the passport were in different names. Oops.

 

[Absalom]

Well, media are having a field day making up stuff, but there seems to be no information at all about the event beyond the less-than-a-minute recording. While news stories fabulate about "well into the flight" and spin an impression of the plane having taken off and flown for hours before the missing baby was discovered, the briefness of the radio exchange and the ending phrase by the controllers "return to the gate", translated and quoted in several accounts, indicates the plane was still on the ground and probably had just pushed away from the gate, given that no further taxi instruction were given (although they could have been cut off).

And if you've ever observed family groups from that region travelling, with multiple women and a large number of children, often dressed alike, and lots of carry-ons and such, the scenario does not seem that far-fetched if maybe someone other than the mother, like an older sibling, was thought to have been delegated to carry the baby on board.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

I was taught in High School health class, that you had to have a functioning brain to continue living. Apparently, this is no longer the case!

As to the mother: All I can say is my wife and I had 4 kids in 5 years. For a period of 7 years or so I don't think she ever had a full uninterrupted nights sleep, and yet she never forgot one of the kids...let alone the only kid!

As to the Passports: Now we see how international terrorists move about so freely! When returning from a cruise, the customs agent (or whatever she was) slowed the line down considerably by actually checking that every persons face matched their ID! The people around me were furious! After I was through the line I saw a supervisor watching the young "agent". I went over and said I thought it was great that no one was sneaking in on that cruise ship, he mentioned they caught 2 in the last month, at that gate alone, and that "Girl" was his superstar!

Ivan

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

Here in NJ we've had at least two cases of parents who left children in locked cars on boiling hot days.

 

[Muley Gil]

You think that's bad?

Recently, a British guy flew from Prague to England on his buddy's passport. They had been sharing a room while away and he picked up the wrong one. Apparently four or five different security and airline checks failed to notice that the ticket and the passport were in different names. Oops.

The city I worked for was part of a countywide personnel board. To be promoted, all candidates had to be tested. Two of my fellow officers signed up for the sergeant's test and decided to "test" the system. They swapped driver's licenses and presented them to the officials in charge of registration. The two were mid 30s, both were about 6'3" and about the same weight. The registration people passed them in to the testing area.

Of course, one was black and the other one was white...…..

 

[Old TexMex]

Some years ago, a group of (as i recall) 28 pax went on a day trip dive excursion on the great barrier reef. The boat returned, everyone got off, and the next morning a guy who washed the 58ft dive boat noticed a backpack. The dive company looked inside, found where the owner was staying and called that hotel. The person and his wife ( the Lonergins) hadn't returned. They'd been left out, 36 miles at sea. Never found.
The dive boat skipper was charged but not convicted. The company was charged and closed down.
None of the other divers or 6 crew members noticed that a couple weren't on board.
There were a number of other cases like that, but the divers were all picked up, by another boat, usually.

 

[Watchdog]

A forgotten baby. What Would Jeff Cooper think?

If it didn't involve a 1911 in .45acp in some configuration or another, Jeff Cooper probably wouldn't have given a "forgotten" baby more than sixty seconds of thought.

 

[Salty RI]

One time on my way home from work I stopped at the store for a few things, I saw a woman putting bags in her car and drove off leaving a baby in the cart, she saw me running behind her waving my arms, she stopped, I told her she forgot her kid, she said she was in such a hurry to get home and make dinner she forgot all about the kid.

Sent from my LGL52VL using Tapatalk

 

[ACORN]

Nothing new. Years ago there was a family that left their son home alone over Christmas.
They even made a movie about it.

 

[Bob L]

Some years ago, a group of (as i recall) 28 pax went on a day trip dive excursion on the great barrier reef. The boat returned, everyone got off, and the next morning a guy who washed the 58ft dive boat noticed a backpack. The dive company looked inside, found where the owner was staying and called that hotel. The person and his wife ( the Lonergins) hadn't returned. They'd been left out, 36 miles at sea. Never found.
The dive boat skipper was charged but not convicted. The company was charged and closed down.
None of the other divers or 6 crew members noticed that a couple weren't on board.
There were a number of other cases like that, but the divers were all picked up, by another boat, usually.

Didn't they just make a movie about a similar case where two divers were left out in the open ocean?

 

[Farmer17]

A professional woman with a college degree who works for the State government with a friend of mine dropped her baby off at daycare and came to work and then when she got off work went back to the daycare to get the baby and they said it wasn't there. The lady was panicking and the daycare people said she never dropped the baby off that morning and they went out to her car and the baby was still in the backseat car carrier. The woman had forgot to drop the child off that morning and it had been in the backseat the whole time and she didn't realize it and it was summertime and the baby was dead.

 

[soFlaNative]

My brother and I forgot his dog while we were out and about. Realizing Barth wasn't with us after a couple minutes we turned the truck around and headed on back.
Dog was sitting right where we left him with an almost human expression of "what a couple of dumb bums".