Car seat on plane

I want to take my britax marathon car seat with us when we fly. We are flying standby. She is still 18 pounds at 18 months so she still sits backwards. I dont see how that would fit in a plane backwards without hitting the seat in front of me. I might just have to sit her forward facing because of this. Has anyone flown and used these before? How did you board the plane with it and was it a hasslle to get it buckled in? I am afraid Ill hold up the plane trying to fasten it in. I am stand by so I wont get to board until the very end.

Hi...we have flown with our Marathon a few times. It is a little heavy and we had to sort of hold it up in front of us to get it down the aisle. I have only installed it forward facing (FF) because my son was 2 and 3 when we used it on the plane. Others here have installed it rear facing (RF) though and hopefully one of them will respond as well. As far as your concern about it affecting the seat in front of you...if you are paying for a ticket for your daughter then she can sit the way that is safest for her which is RF since she is under 20 lbs (bring your Marathon manual with you). If the person in front can't recline their seat they just can't. The seats in front of exit rows don't generally recline and whoever sits there just has to deal with it too. I would hope the people wouldn't be jerks about it but you never know. Also they will have you put the seat in the window plane seat so you don't block anyone else from getting out of your row.

I have never flown stand by before but I think the Marathon should install pretty quickly RF.

Also here is a link to the FAA regualtions on carseats on the plane. I would print out a copy and take it with you. They may try to tell you that the seat can't be RF but they are not correct. As long as a carseat is approved for plane use you can use it as it's manual dictates. There is a part in the regs. (10b) that talks about the carseat being secured in a forward seat and sometimes they take that as meaning FF.

http://www.carseat.org/Legal/FAA-AC120-87A.pdf

I've traveled extensively with a rear facing big Britax. It won't hit the seat in front of you. Or if it does it won't hit it hard. And Britax allows for bracing anyway.

It doesn't matter if the person in front of you can't recline. When you buy a seat you're not guaranteed a reclining seat. There are tons of seats on the plane that don't recline. The last row, the row in front of the exit row, for example. If the person there is unhappy they can ask to be reseated.

At 18 pounds your seat isn't certified for forward facing use. Not to mention a big Britax is MUCH easier to install rear facing than forward. Forward the buckle ends up directly behind the seat and it's impossible to open. To the point where many of us have either removed the seatbelt from the plane's seat, had the pilot or crew back to help, have had maintenance come and get the seat out, etc. To get it to work you can either flip the buckle, or get a seatbelt extender so that the buckle ends up outside the belt path. Either way it's a hassle. But rear facing you just put it through the belt path and buckle it over the cover and you're done. Easy peasy.

Oh, put the armrest up.

Safe trip!

Wendy

Wendy, I hoped you would respond because you have always answered all my airplane questions and most of the info I was trying to give the OP I had gotten from you .

Also, I noticed your siggy...Congratulations!

Aw Wendy how exciting!

Back to the OP, it should fine fine it might be a bit upright. I have a picture of a MA rear-facing on a plane. Benjamin would have been 15 months old.

Ditto what everyone has said. We just did a big trip with 2 boulevards, and have flown on 10 airplanes in the last 6 weeks, all with atleast 1 carseat(one trip we only took the baby). On only 1 of those did I get someone that complained about the baby/not being able to recline. I (nicely) responded that she would be be content and probably sleep the entire way because she had her own seat, instead of fussing and trying to climb everything in site. He still huffed, but never said another word.