jrhmdtraum

When are airlines going to require "car seats" for babies instead of lap kids.

I was on a flight last week where hit an air pocket and a lap baby went flying along with several lap tops, etc. The stew said quite common.

BStrauss3

It's going to take some horrific incident, and have to overcome a lot of $ concerns from families travelling.

Internationally, they change 10% of full coach, which can make it cheaper to buy the little projectile it's own seat. But domestically...

"Why should I have to spend $x just for little Billy? He can sit on my lap for the hour... Yeah, right, Ms. BStrauss3 was actually BIT by one of the little monsters who thought sis's seat was a jungle gym.

I think the little ones s/b in cages. "Please remember to put your children in the larger overhead bins on the DEF side. If you put them in grille first, three children can fit in each overhead. If you've brought both a rollerboard and child on, decide now which one you want to check, bring it to the front and we'll be happy to check it to your final destination."

----Burton

AngryMiller

That image sounds like something out of a Tim Burton movie.

Now how about the preteens and teens that insist on kicking the seat back in front of them for the duration of the flight? Wife called once as I was deplaning and asked how it was. Told her that I had my remaining kidney massaged for most of the flight by a child whose inconsiderate mother did nothing. Funny thing was that the mother was quite angry when she overheard my side of the conversation.

LessO2

Unlikely.

And unfortunately, but it takes a lot more than one person dying for the FAA to mandate changes.

jrhmdtraum

Unfortunately, people care more about $ than their kids.

ie

Lets buy the old car for our new 16 yo driver. Who cares if it does not have air bags nor shoulder belts. If he wrecks it, it is cheap.

I don't know where the URL is now, but there was a stew union where they kept track of the number of babies hurt.

Flaflyer

Could not have been last week. IIRC, the PC Police removed the "stew" from commercial flights about 20 years ago.

jrhmdtraum

Other than the fact that I still fondly remember the "coffee, tea or me" days (even had one recently who remembered "the turtle club"); you need to fly Singapore Air. They still have the stews of yesteryears. The women "FA"s are all young and gorgeous. If they exceed tight restictions on size, they are out. After two years (might be slightly more), they are out and get great jobs outside based on their resume. The male "FAs" are long termers.

ND Sol

It is not going to happen since more babies will be killed if instituted. The Gov't did a study and found that if the policy was instituted more families would then drive instead of flying due to the additional cost. And, since flying is much safer than driving, more babies would die. The study actually gave an estimated number of additional deaths.

The same can also be said of the TSA. More people are driving than did before due to the some of the screening procedures.

jrhmdtraum

True, the study was done. However, if you look at it, it did not have the kids belted in car seats in the cars. Looking at the data of accidents with kids belted in cars, there are rare kids killed if they are seated properly. So, the injury risk remains lower for kids in cars than in airplanes. The same does not hold for their parents

Flaflyer

Spoiler Alert: Two years ago I had the experience of spending 17 hours in SQ F on the LAX-SIN nonstop being pampered by a sweeeet young thing. ^ It will spoil all your other flying.

Finite Elephant

Um, yeah. That pricing you're stating may be for flights leaving during the Carter Administration, but these days it's roughly 10% of adult fare for a lap infant and 75% of adult fare for kids under two in their own seat internationally. And they don't get miles for that. U.S. flag carriers don't allow lap infants for long-haul international flights at all.

Throw in the way that the airlines have bowed to pressure from status members to not allow those traveling with small children to board early, making securing a car seat that much more aggravating all around, and you have the reasons you don't see a lot of kids in car seats.

If the airline really wanted to solve the problem, they'd give you the option of having a car seat already in place at the kid's seat when you board. For a modest fee of course. If I can order a kids' meal on booking and they can get that right, I should be able to get a car seat.

docmonkey

Rare, but rarer than the rates of babies killed in airplanes without being in car seats?
Do you have a link to a study backing this up? So you're saying that requiring a purchase of seats for infants would result in fewer dead infants, but more injured parents?

N965VJ

Be careful what you wish for. If an airline would be providing that seat, it would have to meet a Technical Standard Order. If they’re going to go to the trouble and considerable expense of having TSO’d baby seats available, I don’t think there would be a modest fee involved.

Heck, for good measure they would probably make it an OpSpec that *only* those seats could be used.

EDIT: Does it show that I don’t have kids? I knew of a label on baby seats that said they were approved for use on aircraft, but as it turns out there is a TSO.

cparekh

Why exactly do we need to change the rules? Are people forbidden from strapping their child into a car seat (they may be, I don't know). If they are allowed to do so, those that value the extra safety will do so. I understand that there may be some sort of negative externality here: a flying child could hit and injure someone else, but there are far more laptops and dvd players on a flight.

I don't really feel like I want to FAA telling some parent how to travel with their child if there is no effect on me whether they lock them down or not.

The other problem with passing the rule is that it will raise the cost of flying. Since flying parents with kids will be much more price sensitive, the airline would be smart to cross-subsidize that cost to more inelastic travelers, thus also raising ticket prices for those traveling without kids.

jrhmdtraum

cpar
I guess a kid's life is not worth extra cost to you.