Article re car seats mandatory for air travel

I'm surprised at the comments! They are mostly in favor of buying a seat! Funny, too. Ha.

Re: Article re car seats mandatory for air travel?

I ran into this recently with a friend who was flying with her newborn. And I really stuck my foot in my mouth as far as tact is considered. Blurting out how not too far in the past flight attendants referred to lap babies as missiles. I felt awful b/c I knew they could not afford to buy that extra seat. And I apologized to her for being a thorn in her side.

However, I have come to the conclusion if you can not afford to buy your child a ticket you can not afford to fly. :twocents: It really shouldn't even be an option. I hate that people have to be forced to do something that is common sense. I'm about as cheap/frugal as they come, so I can definitely understand the inclination, I mean, sheesh, an extra $200 or more for a human being who would be just as happy on my lap (at least for the young baby camp)? But there's a difference between choosing to hold your baby and having to for hours b/c there's literally no place to put her down. And that's forgetting the safety factor.

And I've never understood the it's so hard to lug a seat through the airport thing, either. There are contraptions to get around that. Most families with babies have strollers. Luggage carts are cheap. Having a seat to roll your child through the airport on is a lot easier than waiting for them to walk and worryign about getting separated from them.

Re: Article re car seats mandatory for air travel?

I would really like to see them be mandatory.

(And how about some sort of contraption to keep little legs from kicking the seat in front of them? That would be nice.)

Brianna said:

(And how about some sort of contraption to keep little legs from kicking the seat in front of them? That would be nice.)

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I thought that contraption was called parents? :ROTFLMAO:

Re: Article re car seats mandatory for air travel?

TechnoGranola said:

I thought that contraption was called parents? :ROTFLMAO:

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Tell that to the mom of the boy sitting behind me Sunday who kicked me for the entire 3 hour flight. He looked about 8 years old and apparently didn't care what mom said and she didn't care to remind him other than when I turned around and stared at her.

Re: Article re car seats mandatory for air travel?

TechnoGranola said:

I thought that contraption was called parents? :ROTFLMAO:

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Yes, it's called the "lean over awkwardly to grab feet with one hand while trying to juggle drinks, snacks, and crafting materials for the child on your other side."

And I wish it were only $200ish extra for a seat in Canada. Flights here are more like $700 a person to go anywhere.

Re: Article re car seats mandatory for air travel?

The statistics are pretty compelling, IMO. According to the article, in 2004, 13 people (not just lap babies) died in the US on commercial flights. That tells me that lap babies are pretty darn safe.

As for "if you can't afford a seat, then don't fly," well, that is part of the argument for making babies free. If a family finds driving to be significantly cheaper, then that's what they're going to do, and then the whole family (including the lap baby) is actually less safe for the trip. So by allowing lap babies to fly for free, quite often, safety is increased.

Ideally every family will buy a ticket for every person in that family. But I personally think that it is an issue where it is more important to give people all the relevant information and then let them decide what to do with it. Right now the information is just not getting out there, as far as I can tell. If you ask a bunch of random parents of <2's who are booking flights, I bet that the majority of them don't even know that it's an option to buy a seat for their baby. Parents should be told the risks/benefits and then allowed to decide.

For us? We are currently on vacation in Florida, a loooong trip or a short flight from our home in NY state. We priced out driving vs. flying, and paying for a ticket for the <2 in our family would pretty much make the decision to drive the far more economical option. Safer? Nope. (In case anyone is curious, we ended up driving to DC and flying from there to here with family who live in DC. We got terrific prices on the flights and did get a seat for the <2. But in the end, we still probably would have been *safer* overall to all of us fly out of an airport closer to our house, even with the <2 as a lap baby, rather than driving 6 hours to DC before flying out.)