I, Too, Think We Should Ban Nuts On Planes...

...but not peanuts, people like you:

What are you most scared of? Perhaps snakes send a chill down your spine. Or heights leave your knees weak.

Heights, yes, I don't like them. But I don't let that fear rule my life. 

Peanuts may sound like an odd source of phobia, but they have taken on an absurd bogeyman quality for me since my daughter was taken to hospital by ambulance after eating peanut butter when she was six months old. Just the sight of a bowl on a pub bar, or their shells discarded on the pavement, can raise my heart rate – even when I’m not with her.

Nowhere is the sight of peanuts more confronting than at 30,000ft, especially now when millions are jetting back from their holidays. Travelling with a severely allergic child can be a nightmare for all sorts of reasons, but the idea you could be sat next to a passenger consuming the very thing that has hospitalised them is its own kind of hell.

As Tim pointed out, this is a you problem. Not an us problem. 

Most airlines will make an announcement asking passengers to avoid consuming nuts if you let them know that somebody in your party has a severe nut allergy. But I brace for impact when these announcements are piped out. On almost every flight there is at least one passenger who sighs or makes some inane comment, loud enough for everyone to hear, about how annoying it is.

When confronted with someone else's neurosis and entitlement, I'd be surprised if no one did that. 

I didn’t realise the right to eat nuts was a civil liberties issue. How utterly absurd.

Then you're as dumb as a brick. 

I am mystified by this mean-spiritedness. Allergies are not a lifestyle choice but a medical condition.

 It's a very good question, isn't it? 

Take a look at some of the comments under Chloë’s post and you’ll see what I mean. They are staggering in their stupidity. “Fly private or DON’T FLY AT ALL. Don’t make other people’s lives miserable just to please yours!” one reads.

Allergic people can’t be wrapped in cotton wool.

Good, we agree on that!  

Banning nuts on planes seems like a no-brainer.

To a person with no brain, yes. What are airline supposed to do, frisk people for them? 

Banning nuts on planes could send an important message to the broader public. That people with allergies should be able to travel without fear. That compassionate societies make accommodations.

We've made far to many accommodations to modern life and the inability of people to realise it doesn't revolve around them or raather, we've been made to!