<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by johnndor:
I linked to this post from one in the Delta forum - maybe a little late in the game to comment, but I didn't see this mentioned before:
We have taken our son on many flights, and during a few of those we have put him into his carseat for safety. The problem is, his legs stick out of the car seat and are directly against the seat in front of him. No-where to move. So, we apologize in advance to the person in front, and try to minimize his movement, but kids aren't always trying to kick the seat when they bug you, sometimes they just can't help it.</font>
Why do you put him in the car seat? If he's old enough to be able to kick with some force, he's probably old enough to be able to sit in the seat with just the lap belt.
Given a plane crash (very unlikely to begin with), it's unlikely that it would be bad enough to cause injury with only the lap belt, but not bad enough to cause injury with a car seat.
The extra trouble to drag the car seat through the airport, on the plane, etc., isn't worth it. After all, staying at home (with padded walls) is safer, so why not just do that instead?
When my son was getting a little too big to hold on a lap, I bought him his own ticket (50% off until age 2 for domestic flights), and used the lap belt. It worked just fine.