Why do you fly with your infant on your lap if you can afford another seat?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, do you always make the safest choice for other things?

Driving your kid to school in 7 times more dangerous than riding a school bus (both are way more dangerous than flying with a lap baby), and yet I know parents who don't think twice about picking up their kid on the day they have soccer practice. Do you write posts about how horrible those people are?

I never said they are horrible people. I said they’re choosing a less safe option for little discernible reason. It’s not analogous to driving in a car because we often have no other choice. If you can afford a seat for your infant and don’t buy one, you’re choosing the less safe option. My question is why. Most of your answers seem to be that the risk is worth saving the money. The FAA and AAP strongly disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, do you always make the safest choice for other things?

Driving your kid to school in 7 times more dangerous than riding a school bus (both are way more dangerous than flying with a lap baby), and yet I know parents who don't think twice about picking up their kid on the day they have soccer practice. Do you write posts about how horrible those people are?

I never said they are horrible people. I said they’re choosing a less safe option for little discernible reason. It’s not analogous to driving in a car because we often have no other choice. If you can afford a seat for your infant and don’t buy one, you’re choosing the less safe option. My question is why. Most of your answers seem to be that the risk is worth saving the money. The FAA and AAP strongly disagree.

You are insufferable. I hope you are sitting in a different row from us!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, do you always make the safest choice for other things?

Driving your kid to school in 7 times more dangerous than riding a school bus (both are way more dangerous than flying with a lap baby), and yet I know parents who don't think twice about picking up their kid on the day they have soccer practice. Do you write posts about how horrible those people are?

I never said they are horrible people. I said they’re choosing a less safe option for little discernible reason. It’s not analogous to driving in a car because we often have no other choice. If you can afford a seat for your infant and don’t buy one, you’re choosing the less safe option. My question is why. Most of your answers seem to be that the risk is worth saving the money. The FAA and AAP strongly disagree.

You are insufferable. I hope you are sitting in a different row from us!

And your kid will turn into a projectile if the plane experiences bad turbelence. You will not be able to hold onto him or her.

[Anonymous]

For the person who hadn’t heard of lap infants being injured:

3 babies suffered broken spines due to turbelence on a flight last year. https://www.mommyish.com/three-babies-suffer-broken-spines-severe-turbulence-flight/

[Anonymous]

I know one family who purchased a seat for a 1 year old and the allocated seat was not next to the parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know one family who purchased a seat for a 1 year old and the allocated seat was not next to the parent

That’s on them. Make sure the seat is next to the parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For the person who hadn’t heard of lap infants being injured:

3 babies suffered broken spines due to turbelence on a flight last year. https://www.mommyish.com/three-babies-suffer-broken-spines-severe-turbulence-flight/

And over 3,000 infants die annually from unsafe sleep- I’m assuming you never once let your baby sleep in a swing or rock n play, bedshared, put a blanket in the crib, etc. I didn’t, even though I’ve flown with a lap infant- because it’s impossiblw to prevent every possible tragedy so I focus on the statistically common ones. I bet if a hidden camera recorded your parenting for a week we could find plenty of instances of supposedly perfect parents making less than perfect choices. Because that’s how real life works.

[Anonymous]

In case you all are wondering about the science/economics of this, the FAA did an analysis in 2005. They determined that a high enough percentage of families would be deterred by the added cost if all children needed seats. A certain percentage would end up driving, and according to the odds, more people would die.

https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?contentKey=1966

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, do you always make the safest choice for other things?

Driving your kid to school in 7 times more dangerous than riding a school bus (both are way more dangerous than flying with a lap baby), and yet I know parents who don't think twice about picking up their kid on the day they have soccer practice. Do you write posts about how horrible those people are?

I never said they are horrible people. I said they’re choosing a less safe option for little discernible reason. It’s not analogous to driving in a car because we often have no other choice. If you can afford a seat for your infant and don’t buy one, you’re choosing the less safe option. My question is why. Most of your answers seem to be that the risk is worth saving the money. The FAA and AAP strongly disagree.

But people drive cars when they have other choices all the time. The example I gave above is an example of that kind of situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For the person who hadn’t heard of lap infants being injured:

3 babies suffered broken spines due to turbelence on a flight last year. https://www.mommyish.com/three-babies-suffer-broken-spines-severe-turbulence-flight/

Nope. Not true. No one broke their spine on the Aeroflot flight from Russia to Bangkok. Several people of all ages broke bones but no life threatening injuries and no one died. Read the follow up articles.

Statistically flying is much safer than driving. It is safer for us to fly with our 18 month old twins in our laps than drive 12 hours. Why waste $1000 buying seats? We buy economy plus seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, do you always make the safest choice for other things?

Driving your kid to school in 7 times more dangerous than riding a school bus (both are way more dangerous than flying with a lap baby), and yet I know parents who don't think twice about picking up their kid on the day they have soccer practice. Do you write posts about how horrible those people are?

I never said they are horrible people. I said they’re choosing a less safe option for little discernible reason. It’s not analogous to driving in a car because we often have no other choice. If you can afford a seat for your infant and don’t buy one, you’re choosing the less safe option. My question is why. Most of your answers seem to be that the risk is worth saving the money. The FAA and AAP strongly disagree.

You are insufferable. I hope you are sitting in a different row from us!

And your kid will turn into a projectile if the plane experiences bad turbelence. You will not be able to hold onto him or her.

Blahdeblahdeblahdeblah.

My kid is actually a teen now, who, incredibly enough, survived every one of her lap rides in airplanes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you buy a seat for an infant, they have to be in the seat for take off and landing. It can be a pain to drag a car seat thru an airport. And my babies always screamed the most on takeoff and landing, unless I was nursing them. Which isn’t allowed if you have a seat for them. I was offered an extra seat on southwest when the flight wasn’t full, and declined it for this reason.

I have also never heard of a baby getting hurt as a lap held infant. I’m sure it has happened, but it seems pretty rare.

Of course it’s rare, but why take the chance? My kid got upset too and it was a pain to drag the car seat through the airport, but we did it.

Guess what a lap infant becomes during bad turbulence or a crash? A projectile: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.consumeraffairs.com/amp/news/study-lap-infants-at-increased-risk-of-death-on-airline-flights-080414.html

I understand that lap held infant are at greater risk than those secured in car seats. But the absolute risk is still incredibly small. And the risk that my kid will scream her head off is 100% unless I’m able to hold and comfort her. It is much much riskier to drive in our car, and yet we choose to do that too.

Fine, then accept that risk. If there’s bad turbulence you won’t be able to hold onto your kid, but that’s your choice. We all have to take risks in life (driving in a car, flying on planes), but some of us choose to find other ways to comfort our kids on planes and make sure they’re secured in case of bad turbelence or a crash. I hope you never have to try to hold onto your kid if god forbid the plane hits bad turbelence.

My kids are teens now, but having flown in very bad turbulence, I have never seen it so bad that I could not hold onto things.

If the turbulence is bad enough for your child to become a projectile, then you probably have bigger fish to fry and no one is getting off that plane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, do you always make the safest choice for other things?

Driving your kid to school in 7 times more dangerous than riding a school bus (both are way more dangerous than flying with a lap baby), and yet I know parents who don't think twice about picking up their kid on the day they have soccer practice. Do you write posts about how horrible those people are?

I never said they are horrible people. I said they’re choosing a less safe option for little discernible reason. It’s not analogous to driving in a car because we often have no other choice. If you can afford a seat for your infant and don’t buy one, you’re choosing the less safe option. My question is why. Most of your answers seem to be that the risk is worth saving the money. The FAA and AAP strongly disagree.

You are insufferable. I hope you are sitting in a different row from us!

And your kid will turn into a projectile if the plane experiences bad turbelence. You will not be able to hold onto him or her.

OP, it sounds like you have never flown, either with a child or during turbulence.

[Anonymous]

Just go watch Laura Binanti’s IG stories of when she and her husband travel with their toddler. They always buy her a seat even though she’s under the age and she never uses it except to hold snacks and her toys.

Even when I bought mine her own seat, she still sat on my lap for takeoff and landing most times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because the odds are very, very long. This study showed that over a 3 year period, with 7573 reported medical emergencies, 10 results in infant death. That's about 3-4 per year. And those are not necessarily due to lap children. That's all deaths including unrelated medical issues. How many children fly annually? According to the CDC, in 2016, there were 3965 deaths of children under age 5. The risks of infant death on an airplane are significantly lower than many other issues, including deaths in traffic accidents (even in car seats), number of deaths from infants left in a hot car, deaths from household accidents, deaths from guns, and so on. You realize that putting your child in a car seat and driving out of your driveway is hundreds of times more dangerous than carrying your child in your lap on a plane?

There are far, far greater risks in this world for parents to consider than this very, very unlikely situation, but you go ahead and spend your money for the rare chance that your child will be killed on an airplane because it didn't have a seat. I'm glad that you can afford to throw a few hundred dollars away on this over-cautious mentality, but I chose other safety options and concerns when my children (now 7) were small.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/study-lap-infants-at-increased-risk-of-death-on-airline-flights-080414.html
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/child-health.htm

It’s not mutually exclusive. I choose to do everything to make sure my child is safe, including purchasing a seat. I don’t care if there’s only a small chance of its being an issue.

You realize that by this logic, you shouldn’t be driving your kid or really leaving the house st all, right? I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I call BS on the “I choose to do everything to keep my child safe” thing. You do not. All these decisions are calculated risks.

You are making no sense. I choose to minimize the risk in the things we have to do. My kid will be in a rear facing car seat until she hits the weight limit for her seat’s rear facing setting. I choose to fly with her in the safest possible way. The answer isn’t to stop living, but there’s an option in between never going anywhere and knowingly putting your kid at greater risk—it’s called buying them a damn seat, which the AAP and FAA strongly recommend you do.

You rock sanctimommy! Now go out there and Libby to get the law changed- all these unprotected infants are depending on you!