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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.

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

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

But it is never that simple.  My guess is that given the miniscule risks involved, the risk of dropping the seat on the infant while transporing it, injuring the infant due to improperly installing the seta on the aircraft or injuring your back severely by carrying the seat, thereby compromising your infant's care for a while are greater than the decreased risk of using the car seat on the plane.   it is comforting to feel smug, but sadly, rarely correct.  Risk analysis is just way more nuanced than we'd like to believe.

This doesn't at all mean you should ignore essential safety improvements like car seats for cars, but when you are dealing with an 0.00001% risk improvement, the things you've neglected are almost always more important than the one you are considering.

- professional engineer and mom with common sense[/quote]

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