Flying With Babies

I got a text message Thursday morning saying that all was well. Though exhausted, my daughter's little family had arrive in Belfast and was en route to the northwest corner of Ireland for a three week vacation.
As we brought them to the airport and saw what they had to go through, we were not sure they were even going to get airborne. They arrived in plenty of time for check-in, but when their turn finally arrived, they were at the check-in counter for more that 1/2 hour. The line up behind them did not move and flight time was coming closer. Finally, the luggage was checked and we walked with them to the departure gate and security. Apparently the ticketing agent through which they purchased the flight, made a slight error when entering their information into the computer. They were designated as two adults and two children, each with a baby! Babies travel for free, but do not get their own seat. So, instead of attaching a baby to one of the family members, each family member got one.
Common sense and logic would say that this was obviously not the case and so they should have been checked in, a flag or note attached to their computer designation and dealt with later. But, protocol is protocol and everything must be in order at all times. A supervisor was called to over-ride the previous designation and issue a new one. This took too long, in every one's opinion. The more we depend on technology, the more it enslaves us.
Perhaps, as my good friend Jan, in England, suggested, the easy solution would have been to find three more babies to take along.