What I did was keep my kid in the stroller (full size, not umbrella), drape the Cosco seat around the canopy, take the seat onboard and have my kid sit in it and gate check the stroller.

I’m the above car seat nazi. My kid has outgrown the scenara next already forward facing. Yes I turned her, she throws up after 10 minutes rear facing and one of us couldn’t sit on vomit patrol in the back forever. Even though the contender is 15 pounds, dragging it attached to the suitcase doesn’t really add that much weight.

don't rent the car seat!! I did and it was a flimsy pos that didn't fit right in the rental car. Big mistake

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a car seat safety nazi, so ignore this advice if you want. Checking the car seat isn’t safe, you have no idea how much happens to it while checked. Nor is renting the seat, same idea but you don’t know if it’s been in an accident. I have a 3yo. I have a travel car seat, graco contender, that I also have straps that hook it to the suitcase with. I just travelled alone, with kid, car seat and suitcase. Total pain in the arse, but not really that awful. I used the seat on the plane, easiest to install with seat belt extender.

Gate checking the seat gets around these (unfounded, I think) concerns about 5e seat being damaged while checked.

I wish this were the case, but on our last flight, they threw all of the gate-checked strollers and car seats in the plane next to us from the ground level into the cargo bay, where they just landed in a big pile. I was pretty aghast (since we had just checked our stroller on own flight!) That's not to say that a seat that gets thrown around is necessarily going to get damaged, but it's definitely not good for the seat, which is why the car seat manufacturers recommend against it. I do think it's probably true that it will get thrown around less if gate checked than if checked as luggage. But it does still get thrown around, at least on some airlines.

Amazon Prime a Cosco to your destination and leave it there when you leave. Cheaper and safer/less gross than renting, and so much less hassle.

There's no great answer here, in my opinion. We just flew to CA with our 3 year old a few weeks ago. We checked his car seat and he used the lapbelt on the plane, then we used his car seat in the rental car. We were going to rent a carseat but it was going to be the same $ as buying a cheap, travel car seat would be anyway. I know that things get damaged in checked luggage handling and I was worried about that but a) this is not the seat he uses the majority of the time at home; it's just a travel car seat we bought specifically for when we fly/rent a car, and b) planes are way too small to accommodate even smallish convertible car seats (unless you're in first class I guess) and I didn't want him kicking the seat in front of us the whole flight or me being scrunched up in the seat next to him without any space the whole flight either.

My kid would have been too big for the CARES harness thing.

Someone upthread said that checking a car seat is free. It was for us but check w/ your airlines because I think it's not free on some of the budget airlines.

Anonymous wrote:I am a car seat safety nazi, so ignore this advice if you want. Checking the car seat isn’t safe, you have no idea how much happens to it while checked. Nor is renting the seat, same idea but you don’t know if it’s been in an accident. I have a 3yo. I have a travel car seat, graco contender, that I also have straps that hook it to the suitcase with. I just travelled alone, with kid, car seat and suitcase. Total pain in the arse, but not really that awful. I used the seat on the plane, easiest to install with seat belt extender.

Holy crow. The Contender is not my idea of a travel carseat. It weighs 15 lbs. The Scenera Next is about 7 and the Evenflo is 8.

I also would not check, or gate-check, a carseat. Having seen the condition my gate-checked stroller has returned in...no thanks.