This happened to me so many times that I ended up writing an educational/research doc about infant safety onboard of an airplane. Why, how, death stats, etc.
Children HAVE DIED in the past because they weren't properly secured.
It's extremely frustrating to have to argue with FAs about infant safety. Especially if the airline isn't registered with FAA and does not need to comply.
Being a parent that tries to keep their baby safe in their aft facing car seat literally requires you to have to argue with FAs on every other flight or so. Sometimes even with GAs, because they don't always want to comply with FAA and put the car seat into window seat.
Originally Posted by
geminidreams
In a car the seat is locked into a frame secured in the vehicle. In an aircraft it does not. To say that is 100% wrong for the child to facing forward is incorrect as the securing systems and conditions are not the same as a car. Without a whole lot of simulations on all variety of crash conditions there is no way to determine survivability or likelihood of injury based on orientation as it is an aircraft and not a car. So my point is they baby is far more likely to survive in a capsule in the event of a crash and the orientation is likely to make little difference to the outcome. Certainly the outcome is likely to be much better than a baby sitting in a lap.
There are sled test videos (with infant crash test dummies) of simulated airplane crash landing that shows you why rearfacing is a must for any infant in any forward driving vehicle, not just a car.