I have two children, the oldest one has already traveled thousands of miles with me, and my wife and I usually buy a seat for him so we could use the rear-facing infant seat (which goes into a stroller attachment that we gate-check). The instruction that came with the car seat always says to place it in the in-flight seat rear-facing.

On a recent flight, however, when we put our youngest son in the car seat, about 40 minutes into the flight, two flight attendants came up and asked my wife to turn the car seat around, because they "don't allow rear-facing car seats", and if she did not comply, they would ask her to stow it, and hold the baby on her lap for the rest of the 5 hour flight.

Being that it's a red-eye flight and we were both extremely tired, she argued a little but ultimately gave in, and we turned the car seat around. The moment we turned it around, the seat in front of us reclined, and that's when we realized that this was all because the woman in front of us complained about the fact that she cannot recline her seat. And we couldn't secure the car seat after we turned it around, I suspect because the seat was not designed to be front-facing.

Although I travel a lot, I am not expert in FAA regulations. I have a suspicion this is probably a violation of some safety regulation. Is there anyway to report this to the FAA, or other appropriate organization? Luckily, the flight was uneventful and our youngest son suffered no injuries, but I still would like to verify if what happened to us was in fact legal, and if not, I would like the airline to be notified by the appropriate authority and not let this happen to anyone else.