Last year I became father of a wonderful young son and our little one has been travelling with us since than. He is based in Germany and has already been - traveling in Club - to places like the US, China, Japan, Spain and Korea and even to exotic islands like the UK.
We use a Maxi-Cosi child seat holding all stamps, certificates and authorizations from dozens of organizations (including the ones relevant for BA and the UK) allowing this seat to be used on planes. In all manuals and on the Maxi-Cosi website it reads:
Yes, the Maxi-Cosi Pebble can be used in an airplane. The seat has special certification for this purpose (see the sticker on the bottom of the seat).
http://www.maxi-cosi.co.uk/gb-en/ser...questions.aspx
As it should be in public domain, babies need to be transported in a rear facing position for obvious reasons and this seat allows just for transporting the baby rear facing:
Babies have a large and heavy head compared to the rest of their body. In addition, their neck muscles are not yet fully developed. If the baby is transported in a forward-facing position, his or her head will be thrown forward in the event of a head-on collision. This can cause serious neck injury and may even be fatal. By placing the baby in a rear-facing position, the forces exerted during the crash will be distributed across the baby’s entire back.
For the very same reason the UK government holds that babies under 13 kg need to be transported in a rear facing position:
https://www.gov.uk/child-car-seats-t...r-booster-seat
Our little one has used this seat on multiple flights on multiple carriers rear facing until, well, until we came across BA. BA obviously believes to be more clever than the EU (which is not a surprise) but even more clever than the UK government. In their regulations they hold that that the baby seat must
face the same direction as the passenger seat on which it is positioned
https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb...|||||L2|||||||
As a consequence of that a BA purser recently "ordered" us to place the seat forward facing. We informed her (by directing her to the seat's manual) that the seat was not constructed to be placed forward facing and could even not be attached to the seat. We informed her further that the seat in case of turbulences would - forward facing - be "sailing" through the cabin and endanger the live of our baby and the fellow passengers. The purser - which certainly had never used a child seat since she had been travelling in one herself - could not care less and hold that BA regulation would trump UK and EU law. She held that the safest position would be the extension seatbelt (which is utterly nonsense).
All in all a more than unpleasant experience which will prevent us (me as an Executive Gold member) from travelling with BA. If I had not been under pressure to be in the far east the following day, we would have disembarked from that flight.