Passengers sing ‘Baby Shark’ to calm child crying during 6-hour flight

Editor's note: This article was originally published on March 21, 2022. It has since been updated.

No one likes a crying child on a plane but then what do you do? Parents with kids need to travel and there's no way out. The least fellow travelers can do is be kind to parents, rather than putting them on the spot for their baby crying. One set of passengers showed the most wholesome way to respond to a crying child. The video posted by TikTok user @parikshitbalochi showed a group of passengers on a plane getting together and singing “Baby Shark” to cheer up the crying child. The baby can be seen listening to the iconic song and cheering up, reported God.Dailydot. The video has been watched more than 9.3 million times. It also garnered more than 550,000 likes as well.

The TikTok user starts recording midway through the song and shows the child in tears and being held by a man who appears to be walking the child up and down the plane as the passengers sang "Baby Shark." The camera pans to show a group of passengers clapping and singing in rhythm with the song. The plane appeared to be half-full but those on board were definitely up for it and tried to cheer the child up with the song. The TikTok user posted the video with the text overlay: “Crying baby on the plane? No problem!” They captioned it "Shark! #fyp #flydubai #foryoupage #babyshark #dubai." 

The incident is believed to have taken place during a six-hour flight between Dubai and Albania earlier in March 2022. The TikTok user who recorded the video said they were seated next to the family with the kid who had been “crying nonstop” through the flight. That's when the passengers decided to give the family a helping hand to calm the baby. “First individually people sitting around him tried distracting him, but when nothing worked out a group of guys, including me, started singing Baby Shark and more people joined in,” he said.

It just goes to show that people would do well to not judge or blame the parents of kids who are crying, especially considering there's very little they can do to stop the kid from crying. While no one is expecting a flight full of passengers to sing "Baby Shark" every time, a little patience and understanding go a long way in making parents of kids not feel unwelcome on the plane. One parent really was in awe at the kindness of the passengers. "Really lovely to see this, unless you are a parent, you won't know the struggle that parents do traveling by plane with their little kids," they wrote.

TikTok users couldn't help but laud the passengers for trying to calm the baby with the song. “All passengers passed the vibe check,” wrote one user. "See what can happen when we all work together instead of against each other?" wrote another. One person commented, “Hyping up and supporting parents who are doing their best.” The incident reinforced the faith in the humanity of people. "Never underestimate the kindness of strangers, love it," wrote one person. One person perfectly summed it up and wrote, “It literally costs nothing to be a decent person. We need more of this.”