But you don’t see the 2 and 3 year olds who aren’t on the planes because their families are driving, or simply not traveling at all because it got too expensive. We stopped traveling for several years when our twins were between 18 months and 4 years old, after doing 3-4 long haul trips (West Coast to the UK) when they were younger, partly because it got too expensive and partly because once they started walking but were too young to watch the movies (this was pre-smartphones/iPads), it was unpleasant to keep them cooped up for 11 hours.
On BA’s long haul flights there are bulkhead booster seats for infants (you just pay 10% of the adult fare for an infant without a seat), but you do have to put them on your lap and use the infant seatbelt mentioned above when the seatbelt sign is on.
True, but when you know someone who has been affected by a tragedy it does affect your thinking. I think most of us would feel the same way.
So true! D had a friend whose parents got their daughter a cell phone well before any other kids had them and when therir daughter learned how to drive made her do all the driver’s training down to a T, followed all the no driving with another passenger to a T and got her the safest vehicle on the road. Why? Well their son and his girlfriend were both killed by a drunk driver. Yes, some parents are overprotective and/or overprotective about certain things, but maybe it’s because they’ve lost a child…
While a carrier might prevent the baby being sucked out of the plane, my understanding is that a baby who is thrown clear in turbulence is safer than one who is trapped between a parent and a seat back which is why wearing infants in slings or carriers is no longer allowed.
I only took two flights with a kid under 2, and we purchased a seat for the carseat. For my second kid, we chose to drive, which statistically is unsafer than flying without a carseat. So, I guess I see both sides of this.
Understandable, of course. But that is why we do not make public policy decisions based upon rare anecdotes. A neighbor had a son horribly critically injured while roller skating. Tried to ban skating in town. Didn’t pass.
I never took my kids out of their carseats on flights, except for very brief bathroom trips for poopy diapers, or potty trained preschoolers.
I worked hard to convince my kids that carseats in moving vehicles weren’t optional, because screaming in the carseat is no fun for mom. No way I was going to risk undoing that.
I only flew a few times and never internationally, and I also never flew with a child under 1 who would have needed to nurse, so I recognize that other people might need to make other choices.
I’ve never heard of banning rollersakting due to someone getting injured rollerskating. I have heard of people calling for stricter drunk driving penalities after loosing a loved one in a drunk driving accident. And I’ve heard of people advocting for harsher penalities for abusers after their daughter was killed by her abuser…
Is banning lap infants on planes a good idea? Well, I always had my kids in carseats on planes when they were infants, but then again we didn’t fly often when they were babies. And it’s probably similar to having to wear seatbelts in cars. Yes, accidents don’t always happen, but they can…
Car accidents happen daily. Aircraft accidents are quite rare, certainly moreso than skating accidents. The risk level and frequency of injury are key factors.
If I had a child who was old enough to be able to sit up, I would definitely want them to be safest. The advertised device seems like a really good solution.
How many lap infants have been injured or killed on airplanes in the past decade? It seems like a tiny risk to me relative to all the other possible risks children encounter. But then I flew relatively often with lap infants during my children’s baby years. We didn’t have much money and we wanted to see family. That tiny risk seemed well worth it to build relationships. I also put my babies to sleep on their tummies which turns out to have been a much higher risk, but I had no idea.
Our infants were rolling from front to back and back to front in the nursery at the hospital. I know they weren’t supposed to but they didn’t know. It didn’t matter how they were positioned, they’d switch to whatever position they preferred, no matter the swaddling.
“I saw a baby fly up.” The sudden plunge of the Latam air dreamliner was caused by the pilot’s seat mistakenly moving forward, pushing him into the controls, hence pushing the nose down into a plunge. Passengers who were not in their seats with their seatbelts buckled flew up and hit the ceiling, along with the flight attendants who were up and moving through the aircraft.
This is the very dreaded scenario that caused me to fight to the last minute to hang onto my baby’s car seat to strap into a hopefully empty middle seat on the plane, made me keep them strapped in at all times if possible. And when it wasn’t possible, I wore them in a tightly fitted front carrier holding them close to my chest, outside the seatbelt, so that they wouldn’t fly up if the plane dropped in turbulence.
I am a crunchy California mom and breastfed both my kids until age 2, so yes, I did take my babies out of their car seats on those long flights when we went to visit family. Never flew with a child as a lap baby or strapped to my body in an infant carrier, though. We took their huge heavy annoying car seats on every trip.
times have changed there are now tons of carseats that have stroller attachments. I remember the terrible one that we had when my kids were little. We always put them in their carseat in their own seat or left them home.n This is the one I see the most in NYC
Hope the makers came up with a handle extension for non-petite people! Because our kids nixed that Doona - even myself, at average height, had to hunch
down while pushing it. Good thing we tested these strollers at Nordstrom! Our tall SIL would have had issues with that Doona. But yes, car seats have come a long way. I do not recommend checking your car seat though… our kids’ one was lost by the airline. That was the first and the last time they flew with a lap infant.
