Opinions on car seats on planes

[Anonymous]

I feel like I've read a decent amount on car seat safety and when it comes to car seats on planes, I have parent friends whose opinions I respect who fall on both sides of this debate. Some people insist that any infant or toddler who use a car seat in the car MUST have one on the plane, and I understand why. But I also have tons of friends, well educated, etc. who don't feel it's necessary - they keep their child on their lap and either check the seat or have one to borrow/buy at their destination.

What do you all think? I find all the information and opinions confusing. People have such strong opinions on this - hard to know which direction to go.

[Anonymous]

If you've followed the debate, you know what e trade-offs are - money vs. safety. It's up to you how you weigh them.

[Anonymous]

We have one. We did one lap flight and it was hard and uncomfortable. Way back we used our seat and it wAs much better and safer.

[Anonymous]

We always had our child be a lap child before age 2, but we booked an aisle and window seat, and often they just let us use the middle seat for our car seat (which we gate checked) if there was room on the plane.

Once our child turned 2, I used a car seat, but stopped again when he turned 3 because he was just too jammed in -- there was no room for his feet.

I think the safety issues are negligible.

[Anonymous]

OP here. I think my question is always about relative risk. I understand there are risks, as there are in many things. Not trying to talk myself and others out of buying an extra plane seat - not at all. I just find it hard to develop a sense of the relative risk to lap flights, which is important to me.

For eg, I haven't been a big follower of all the rules in pregnancy - have had little bits of wine, sushi from reputable places, bit of coffee or chai a few times a week, etc. I found it easy to determine the relative risk of those things (i.e. risk to my baby from a cup of chai on the way to work vs. the risk to my baby from the car ride that actually gets me to work). With this plane thing, I have found this relative risk harder to gauge, and obviously the PP responses suggest that many have widely different views on how great these risks are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I think my question is always about relative risk. I understand there are risks, as there are in many things. Not trying to talk myself and others out of buying an extra plane seat - not at all. I just find it hard to develop a sense of the relative risk to lap flights, which is important to me.

For eg, I haven't been a big follower of all the rules in pregnancy - have had little bits of wine, sushi from reputable places, bit of coffee or chai a few times a week, etc. I found it easy to determine the relative risk of those things (i.e. risk to my baby from a cup of chai on the way to work vs. the risk to my baby from the car ride that actually gets me to work). With this plane thing, I have found this relative risk harder to gauge, and obviously the PP responses suggest that many have widely different views on how great these risks are.

Relative risk of what, OP? You talk about risk as if the fact you take some risks cancels out the others (example: risk of a cup of chai is not "versus" the risk of the car ride, it is in addition to the risk of the car ride). What you should be comparing is the risk of x as compared to the difficulty of not doing x.

There's no question that having your child in a car seat during an in-flight incident is safer: Google can show you plenty of children who lived or died on planes solely due to the presence or absence of a car seat. If you can't or don't want to buy a seat for your child, the next question is whether you'll travel at all, and if you travel whether you'll drive or fly. Then the relative risk you compare is, flying without a car seat vs driving. There's some evidence that flying without a car seat is safer than driving, because airplane incidents are low-frequency (although high-consequence) events.

I think what you're really asking is, "What are the chances my flight will experience a [survivable] crash, or turbulence causing me to lose hold of my lap child?" Which translates too, What are the chances I'll pay for a seat unnecessarily, versus not pay for one and regret it? That answer is statistically knowable: probably an airline forum would have that info. Before you look it up, though -- what level of risk would you be comfortable with? If I could promise you that your flight had a 1 in 1000 chance of an event in which a car seat saves your child's life, what would you do? What if it was 1 in a million? Some people are fine with 1 in a million risks; others find they can't stomach it once there is a number attached. If you're in the latter group, save your effort and [since you haven't mentioned that you can't afford it] just buy the seat.

Best of luck.

[Anonymous]

Depends. I have flown many many times with my now two year old. There is NO way she would sit in a car seat for a long flight (over 2 hours) so then it just gets in the way. We always buy her seat and rent a CARES harness for take off/landing and turbulence but beyond that she gets up and down from her seat to play on the floor. The full size seats are huge and may put your kids feet into the seat in front of them which means non stop kicking. We held her on our lap until she was 9 months old and then get her a seat with no car seat. We gate check the seat. Althugh we have rented them with cars before, they meed all safety standards but definitely not as nice as the one we own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depends. I have flown many many times with my now two year old. There is NO way she would sit in a car seat for a long flight (over 2 hours) so then it just gets in the way. We always buy her seat and rent a CARES harness for take off/landing and turbulence but beyond that she gets up and down from her seat to play on the floor. The full size seats are huge and may put your kids feet into the seat in front of them which means non stop kicking. We held her on our lap until she was 9 months old and then get her a seat with no car seat. We gate check the seat.

All of this. My DD is happy to play and sit still on the plane, but would NOT last long in a car seat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Google can show you plenty of children who lived or died on planes solely due to the presence or absence of a car seat.

I'm not sure that's true, actually. There are instances where lap children have died in plane crashes -- but so has everyone else on the plane, and it's not clear to me that there is good evidence comparing survival rates for lap vs. seated children.

I have flown a lot with my kid. He was always a lap infant under 2; after that we used CARES, but that was primarily to contain him in his seat, not so much because I felt that it was an important safety measure. I personally evaluated the risk as minimal and the hassle as major, YMMV.

[Anonymous]

Just spend the $70 on a CARES harness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Google can show you plenty of children who lived or died on planes solely due to the presence or absence of a car seat.

I'm not sure that's true, actually. There are instances where lap children have died in plane crashes -- but so has everyone else on the plane, and it's not clear to me that there is good evidence comparing survival rates for lap vs. seated children.

I have flown a lot with my kid. He was always a lap infant under 2; after that we used CARES, but that was primarily to contain him in his seat, not so much because I felt that it was an important safety measure. I personally evaluated the risk as minimal and the hassle as major, YMMV.

agree that google will not help you here. A bit ago I got curious and clicked my way through every incident involving infants in an FAA database I found. there were very, very few and the DB went back to the 70s or 80s.

[Anonymous]

We've always bought seats for our kids, even when they were newborns (my youngest flew at age 6 weeks.) We used their regular carseats (Britax Roundabouts--my kids are in late elementary-high school years now) until they were about 4 or so, then we just brought along a booster to use at our destination and had the child ride in the regular airplane seat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just spend the $70 on a CARES harness.

Not even. You can rent them for $14 for 21 days on eBay.

[Anonymous]

I think this also depends greatly on the child. My now 3-year-old has made transatlantic flights at 11 months, 23 months and just over 2. He has always loved his car seat and fallen asleep while in it so we chose to buy him a seat each time and bring it along. True to form he was mostly happy to stay in his seat and slept well on all flights. But I have friends whose kids hated their car seats so it would have been too much of a gamble for them.

Plus, it helped us get our son through the airport because we bought a GoGo Babyz cart thing and wheeled him in his seat. He was happy to sit and watch the world go by as he would have been in a stroller.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this also depends greatly on the child.

Yes, also this! One reason we made the opposite decision (flying with a lap child) is that it would have been cruel to the other passengers! My kid would have screamed his head off if we'd tried to keep him strapped into a car seat.