Okay, excuse me for being so long winded, but I have a decent bit of experience with this. If you're flying Lufthansa, you COULD spend the small fortune to buy one of the VERY few European seats that Lufthansa. The ONLY American seats that Lufthansa allows for use on the flight are as follows:
Britax Chaperone
Chicco KeyFit 30
Evenflo Embrace LX
Maxi Cosi Mico
Cosco Starter
Safety 1st Starter
Safety 1st Designer 22
If you're not well versed on the current American car seat market offerings, this list is comprised completely of infant car seats AND the list is very out of date as the only models listed that are still available are the Chicco KeyFit 30, Maxi Cosi Mico, and the Evenflo Embrace LX.
If you're taking British Airlines, the ONE AND ONLY toddler car seat they allow to be used in flight is the Britax Eclipse.
We had my aunt-in-law bring a Maxi Cosi Pebble over on her flight from Germany just two weeks before our youngest arrived as we would be accompanying her back and as it was my first time flying (yikes that was a looooong first flight!), on top of being a former tech, I was adamant about having a car seat for her to ride in both on the flight and during our 3 month stay with family in Germany. Anyways, we found out the hard way that it would have been cheaper to have ordered the darn thing ourselves and had it shipped directly to us! Oops! Because yes, you CAN legally purchase and import a European car seat (to virtually anywhere in the world actually, with the only exceptions being Canada and Australia as they both specifically outlaw this), there are plenty of sites that will ship them here, albeit difficult to locate them through search engines like Google. Bummer though, the cost of purchasing a European seat is VERY expensive regardless of how you get it here, so unless you plan on being there a few months, you plan on making several trips over there while your child will be able to use the seat, and/or you plan on making trips over there with future children who would use the seat, it's not worth the small fortune. It cost almost $500 to get our Pebble here thanks to the extra €200 baggage charge that the aunt got slapped with for the big (over the size limit but extremely carefully packed and protected) box. Also, so far I have only found ONE SINGLE SEAT in Europe that has an extended limit IN the harness, so if your child is near the limit of the small 40lb/40in Evenflo Tribute (the limit of virtually all European convertible, toddler, or combination seats [aka group 0+/1 seats, group 1 seats, group 1/2 seats, or group 1/2/3 seats]) then the ONLY harnessed Euro seat your kiddo would be guaranteed to fit into is the Britax Römer Advansafix II SICT. But if you were to wind up with a rental without ISOFIX you couldn't use it (with the harness) as it achieves the extended weight capacity of 25kg by requiring BOTH the seat belt and ISOFIX for installation. (This is because the combined child and seat weight for ISOFIX is 33kg and selt belt installation for car seats is being phased out completely over the next few years thanks to UN-R129, aka the new iSize standard.) So, my suggestion for your particular situation would be to find somewhere before leaving, that is as close as possible to the car rental place that sells booster seats. Both high back and backless boosters can be found over there for about as cheap as you can find them here. A booster seat couldn't be used in flight regardless of what approval sticker it bears, and even a small backless booster would take up a good chunk of real estate in your luggage, so it would likely be the easiest, safest, and cheapest option for your family.
Wait, I almost forgot!
Kiddy makes an interesting line of, erm, "combination" seats, or group 1/2/3 seats.
Comfort Pro
Guardian Pro
Guardian Pro 2 (this model has BOTH TÜV Rheinland AND FAA approval [yup, the FAA actually approves foreign seats too!])
The above models are approved for use on Lufthansa when used as a toddler seat, but not when used as a booster. Don't worry, these German designed seats are NOTHING like the horrifying American shield boosters of yesteryear! They are also MUCH cheaper than any harnessed European seat, at least in terms of ordering from and shipping to the US.
If you're flying with other airlines, then check their approved list of seats before making ANY sort of purchase. If you intend to look for a different harnessed European seat for the kiddo to use in-flight, be sure to check for TÜV Rheinland approval.
One final warning, if you purchase a foreign car seat for travel YOU CANNOT USE IT HERE! IT IS ILLEGAL TO USE A FOREIGN CAR SEAT IN A VEHICLE IN THE US!
And if you do buy one, you'll be cursing the law makers that make it illegal because you'll get to see first hand how US seats look like some sort of scary, sad joke by comparison!
Slightly off topic but, nifty bit of info. Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but this new Baby Trend Hybrid combination seat is actually just the Nania Beline SP modified so that they could put that God-awful chest clip on the harness... Seriously, why has that dangerous overcomplication of design not been phased out of North American seats yet?! Even after being a tech for two years nearly a decade ago, over 20 nieces and nephews, and of course the tons of baby's you see in day to day life, I can literally count on my fingers the number of times I have EVER seen a child buckled in PROPERLY(!), all because the absolutely unnecessary chest clip can't be figured out by 99.9% of people!!! If anyone knows of a currently available convertible car seat model WITHOUT a chest clip, or at least ALLOWS the use of the seat without it let me know, I've been looking for one since the day I got my Pebble (Best. Infant. Seat. Ever. I'd like to chuck our SnugRide40 at the heads of whatever "geniuses" designed that piece of garbage and decided to discontinue the entire ClassicConnect line!!!) but have had zero luck!
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