Barbara Kay: You’re male. You must be a pervert

Article here. Excerpt:

'In an interesting news item out of Britain, a man has received about £3,000 in costs and damages combined for sex discrimination by British Airways (BA).

Mirko Fischer, 33, and his pregnant wife were on a London to Luxembourg flight in April 2009. Deciding she preferred the window, she exchanged her middle seat with her husband, thus seating him adjacent to a child travelling alone.

A flight attendant, who later claimed ignorance of the fact that Mr. Fischer was with his wife, informed him that he must return to his original seat, as it was BA policy not to allow adult men to sit next to an unaccompanied minor. After some discussion, Mr. Fischer did ultimately return to his seat, unwilling to make a spectacle of himself, but felt “embarrassed, humiliated and angry.”

For its part, BA conceded fault in not realizing Mr. Fischer was with his wife, but defended the general policy. A spokesman said, “We had 75,000 children fly with us last year and it is an issue we take very seriously.”

BA is not the only airline with that policy. It’s a common practice. In a September 2007 post in these pages in which I mused over airline inconsistencies in profiling discrimination — yes to all adult men, no to potential terrorists — I quoted an expert witness in aviation disputes: “You have to make generalizations for the safety of a child.” She cited what is apparently a well-known adage in airline circles: “No regulation in aviation takes effect without somebody’s blood on it.”

The only inference to draw from that statement is that unaccompanied minors have been physically abused on airplanes by adult men in the past, and therefore the policy is well justified. If that is indeed the case, then airlines have opened the door in principle to profiling in general.

Yet strangely, even though there’s “somebody’s blood” – more than 3,000 somebodies to be precise – on the lack of a profile policy monitoring the kind of people most likely to shed more blood, airlines still frisk little old ladies and pointedly ignore the terror profile guy with the one-way ticket and the nervous manner.'