IMO the best choice is to buy the 1/2 price ticket for the child and use the car seats. The Baby B'air vest is good for when the child has to be out of the seat.

My 2 kids have received FF miles for their tickets, except on UA or DL when using the UA or DL number. Now, I just use the partner (DL/UA) number and they can't seem to tell that it is an infant fare.

The only problem with the car seats is that they have to be on the window seat.

I know there are the cost issues with the FAA or airlines requiring infants to have a seat, but a flight attendent told me: "We secure our coffee makers and luggage on the plane, but our infants are allowed fly through the air during turbulance."

My $0.02.


[This message has been edited by AzLarry (edited 08-25-2000).]

Re the F/A quote "We secure our coffee makers and luggage on the plane, but our infants are allowed fly through the air during turbulance."

What a stupid quote. Is anyone holding the coffee maker and luggage during the flight? If everything has to be restrained on the flight no matter what, why aren't there flight attendant tethers and adult diapers for each seat? (or tethers for passengers using the restroom)


The FAA and the F/A have this mindset that the entire world revolves around air travel. If that were true, then requiring infants to be in a separate seat would make sense. But apparently members of the FAA and the F/A live at the airport, and never step foot in a car, where they are 100 times as likely to die.

A beneficial result would come from the FAA requiring infants to be in a separate seat AND requiring airlines to give the infant seat away for free. While this would result in an increase in air fares, hopefully it would be small enough to be unnoticable.

But under the current proposal, air travel cost for families with children under age two will rise, resulting in some families driving instead of flying, resulting in MORE deaths, not fewer. Ah, but they won't be noticable against the backdrop of 40,000 auto crash deaths per year, so everything will seem OK.

Also, if this proposal comes to pass, the FAA should require airlines to supply the infant "car" seats in the gate area. It doesn't make any sense to have to drag around a car seat through the airport if you arrived on a bus or train.

[This message has been edited by JSrombough (edited 08-26-2000).]

I hadn't even thought of it in those terms JSRom until I read your posts. Ofcourse you are correct that many families will opt for driving and not flying if they have to pay for a child seat (most likely those that will have to pay for several child seats).
However, where do you draw the line? Taking your reasoning to the extreme government should subsidize the airlines to give free (or almost free) travel to all so that intercity travel in motor vehicles would be reduced saving many lives.

I would be more than willing to have an extra $5 or $10 tacked on to my ticket (doubt it very much it would be more than $1 or two) if the airlines would secure a free seat with flights seat for children under 2 (so parents could take the kids to see relatives etc after they are born). For children over 2 a 50% off ticket seems more than fair and other pax are already subsidizing these fares(thanks everyone ). I would also support an exception and allow children up to age 14 to fly free in cases of death and illness of a close relative.

Surely in the end it comes down to parents choices regardless of means. Some parents will choose to pay the extra money and forgo something else (maybe have a cheaper vacation or make budget cuts). Other parents will choose to save the money. I suggest that most lap children belong to parents who feel that either the extra seat is not worth the money given the small chance of anything happening and statistically they are probably right within the context of their own valuation of things. Or they may just not be aware of the risk at all.

In nearly all cases it would be cheaper and safer to just stay at home and not travel at all and that is a choice too. The family that decides to drive 400 miles because the child seats are too expensive is making the decision to do that and it seems a little hard to justify transferring the cost of a decision like that to the rest of the paying public.

[This message has been edited by Mvic (edited 08-26-2000).]

Re tax money or indirect subsidy (higher ticket price) -- Absolutely true. Why is this an issue? Because the federal government has taken upon itself the obligation of protecting us from ourselves.

Either:
A) let us decide our own risk to ourselves and immediate family members
B) forcibly reduce risk, which requires the "help" of everyone else

Requiring infant seats on aircraft, but not free, is neither A) nor B). It isn't B) (despite being compulsory), because risk is not being reduced.

A Flygirl: You mentioned that in an emergency situation you are trained to have parents hold their infants to protect them. Yet in the Iowa crash the mother was required by the flight attendant to put her child on the floor at her feet despite the mother's protests. Do you know if this is a difference in procedures among US and Canadian airlines? Or is there ever a situation where you would also require infants to be placed on the floor?



[This message has been edited by letiole (edited 08-26-2000).]

Give me B for 0-2 year olds, A and B (50% off fares) for 2-14 year olds, and A for the rest.

Does anyone know whether the ticket policies for infants/children are the same across all airlines? Also, whether these policies are federally mandated or individually set by airlines. A priori, I would have guessed that airlines would have found it in their interest to offer more of a discount for families traveling together. Or that the policies might differ for shorter flights (where there's the option of driving) versus longer ones.

Letiole, Yes it is a regulation set by Transport Canada under CARs on my home turf and cannot be diluted, altered or dictated on by individual airlines. I can only guess that it would be the same or similar under the aviation regulations governed by the FAA or regulatory bodies in other countries.

Frankly I found it appalling that an fa would instruct a parent to place their child on the floor especially in an emergency situation. This must have been the "brainstorm" of a very inexperienced fa or one who's training did not sink in properly.

The only association that can be made for safer conditions at floor level is: objects placed on the floor are not as susceptible to the effects of turbulence. Experiment next time by taking that beverage sloshing around on your tabletop and placing it on the floor and you will notice that the displacement is not as great nor is it as likely to tip over. When turbulence hits suddenly and unexpectedly we will often quickly put our coffeepots, glass bottles, and other hazardous items on the galley floors before diving into our own seatbelts. This minimizes the potential damage when there is not time to stow the equipment properly.

Never would a crew member be trained by an airline to place a innocent, defenceless human life on the floor hoping that this "trick of the trade", meant for inanimate objects during turbulence, would sustain or protect that life in an emergency situation.

I cannot believe the blind faith, or more likely the blind fear, that compelled that mother to meekly followed this illogical instruction. She paid such a dear price for doing so.

I once had to take a firm stand with a mother who wouldn't pick her child up off the floor when the seatbelt sign came on. She responded that her child was a hinderance while she was eating her meal and demanded I find somewhere else to "put" the infant until she was finished eating if I kept insisting that the floor was inappropriate. Without having to resort to legal threats, I was finally able to convince her to pick up her child by describing in detail the potential injuries her child could receive, expounding on the nasty microscopic life that was probably thriving in the carpet to start with, and by pointing out the horrified reaction evident on the faces of the people seated around and beside her who were privy to the confrontation...in that order. It took plan "C" for her to react.

Thanks for the response and information A Flygirl. I too could not understand what compelled the mother to follow these directions ... although given the nature of the crash and the forces involved it's unlikely she would have been able to hold on to her child upon impact. I read an essay by the mother and it was without doubt one of the most heartbreaking stories I've ever read.

MagMile

Policy is set by individual airlines on child ticketing fares and are not federally regulated. Because it is a "selling feature" most airlines have the same or a similar policy to be competative.

As to the last portion of your post...shame on you. As a member of this board you should have the aviation corporate strategy figured out by now. Airlines are much more interested in appeasing or accomodating the frequent business traveller...not the family of four/five/six that will take one or two vacations together per year. The company vision, no matter which airline in operation, is to get the best buck for every seat and that is how the revenue per seat, per mile is calculated. The unknown factor of how many children, potentially discounted, per flight would soon throw the standard formulas out the window and send general ticket prices soaring so that a conservative buffer could be built into every ticket sold.

Can you imagine what a fare from anywhere in North America to Orlando (for eg.)would cost if there was a discounted fare structure for children? A popular destination would all of a sudden become a money loser as there is often more children than adults on board this flight. It's one of the consequences of opting to have a family...you pay for travel of each addition you beget and as you chose to expand your family. Other singular, adult travellers would have to subsidize the fare that could have been realized in place of a discounted child fare occupying the same seat by paying higher fares so that the operating/profit margin expectations of the airline are maintained.

It might not sound fair to you but I feel comfortable stating that drastic change to this policy will not be realized or considered for the reasons I've outlined.

To take this to the other extreme...are large or overweight people charged more for occupying the same seat that a 6 year old could occupy? Are seniors charged more or less? Age or size isn't a factor; it's just business; a body present occupying a seat available in the financial scheme of aviation structure.

I shall await your rebuttal with interest.

For unrestricted tickets, SWA charges less for children 2-11 years old than for adults (defined as age 12 and up, as opposed to the usual definition of 2 and up). And their unrestricted adult fares are already lower than other airlines. Somehow this doesn't put them out of business.

Now, when you look at restricted fares, which is what most passengers buy, especially families, SWA does not have a lower fare for kids.

I think the reason you don't see lower restricted fares for kids is because restricted fares are already below average cost. Also, load factors are very high, so there aren't extra seats to sell at a discount to a family of four rather than a single traveller (paying the same fare per person).

Perhaps this was already mentioned and I missed it but UA and I believe most other carriers offer 25-33 percent off international economy fares for children 2-11 and 50 percent off for infants. My son has always received full mileage credit for his kid-priced tickets.

A Flygirl

I always enjoy a debate. I absolutely agree with the proposition that airlines are out to make as much money as they can and I even think that's a good thing. I did not mean to suggest that they should give discounts to families out of a charitable instinct but rather that that might be a way to make even more money.

You bring up the issue of whether large people are charged more for the seat a six year old might occupy or whether old people face different prices. Old people do face different prices, for airfares as well as all other kinds of things. They generally face lower prices because companies believe old people are not willing to pay as much as younger people and because it is relatively easy to charge different prices for old versus young people. And six year olds are charged different prices from adults. So differential pricing already exists (b/c airlines find it profitable). I was raising the issue of whether an even more elaborate scheme is possible. (Don't know about the relative willingness to pay of fat v. thin people but enforcement of a pricing scheme based on weight might be difficult or socially awkward.)

My suggestion is based on the following notion. Airlines charge lower prices to kids b/c the value parents generally place on flying their kids is lower than the typical adult value for a flight. I would suggest that the value declines per kid. That is, parents with 4 kids are not on average willing to pay 4 times the amount to fly their kids as a parent with one kid. Thus, it might be in the airlines' interest to offer a lower per-kid price to larger families. As for whether they can predict load factors and all that with such a pricing scheme, I'm not sure although I tend to think they're awfully sophisticated at those things.

[This message has been edited by MagMile (edited 08-28-2000).]