Hi all,

MrsJudgeJ recently had to travel alone with our six-month old and his two-piece travel system (stroller + car seat), and this had brought many questions - i thought I would post on our experience to possibly help others.

In essence, the questions were about
1) can the two pieces of a travel system be checked for free when the website only mentions a push-chair free ?

[Aer Lingus] A fully collapsible push-chair is allowed free of charge for an infant booking only. All other baggage must be included in the accompanying adult's baggage allowance.
[bmibaby] a pram/buggy will be carried free of charge.

2) do they have to be checked at check-in counter or can they be checked at the gate ?

The answer is that, in both cases (shorthaul Aer Lingus and shorthaul bmibaby), both the stroller and car seat were tagged for free, no questions asked; they only had to checked at time of boarding, at the plane door or steps so there was no need to carry Baby while waiting for the boarding call.

Three additional titbits of possible interest:
- both airlines made a priority boarding call for people with young children, but in the case of bmibaby it was only a call into yet another, 'pre-boarding' waiting room - from which there was no specific order to get to the plane

- the Aer Lingus ground crew at ORK (Cork) were very helpful and helped when they saw MrsJ was struggling to carry baby, travel system and diaper bag all at once, the bmibaby ground crew at BHX (Birmingham) didn't bat an eyelid - thankfully some fellow travellers offered to help

- bmibaby has an additional 5kg free checked baggage allowance for a child under 2, Aer Lingus has no extra allowance.

I'd also like to acknowledge an excellent post on Yahoo Answers by one fellow poster on this board, which was a very useful starting point when we were frantically, anxiously google-ing for answers on the issues above. ^

Cheers,
J-