No because usually the smoke come AFTER the impact, but surviving the impact is the more crucial issue. You simply can't hold your child in that force but you certainly can get him or her out in a a fire. Once the plane stops, the first thing the crew will do is open the exits and then your job is to get you, and your children out. It will only take a split second to get your child out of the seat belt on his car seat.

By contrast, you probably wont be able to search through the aircraft for your child after he or she has been torn out of your arms. In a couple of cases, other passengers have grabbed babies and taken them out of the plane themselves. Reunion happened outside the aircraft.

Planes usually don't burst into flames everywhere. Fire can break out once on the ground, depending on the conditions of the crash. The point is that if you're able to move, do so towards an exit. Don't take anything, just your children!

I shouldn't say this but some people have made mistakes after surviving crashes, mistakes that came with a high price. The airlines don't want this made public but I'll just say, know where your exits are, listen to crew members or ground rescue people ONLY and just get out if you're involved in an incident.

It'd be interesting to have the comparisons between countries where the infant is free on the lap and countries that use the attaching belt

There aren't any. In a few crashes, people were stuffed all over the place (more people than seats) so that wouldn't be a valid comparison.

We were told that children had been crushed by being attached to their parents but we weren't given any evidence of this.

The problem with this debate is that there simply isn't enough data. There haven't been enough crashes and even when there are, it can be a hard call either way. There are so many factors in an accident, it can be hard to put it down to one cause or circumstance to begin with, let alone determine what would have or did help.

Basically, there is no replacement for a car seat. The CAA uses the belly belts not for the child's safety but because they're afraid of the child injuring another passenger when flying through the cabin. They have a point! The FAA has decided to rule in favor of the child's safety. At least loose in the parents' lap, they have a chance. The parent always weighs more than the child.

Again, not enough information! The air authorities are using car crash data to determine safety measures, just because there's so much more of that.

Also, since there are so few accidents, and different rules are applied, you'd have to have a belly belted lap baby next to a loose-in-lap baby, in an accident, to properly compare them... Won't happen! Or you'd have to find two, really identical accidents, both with infants, one with them in belly belts and the other from another country, requiring them to be loose in laps. Don't hold your breathe for that to come out!