It's a bummer and can probably be attributed to seats being crammed in so much. When all legroom was E+ legroom, you might have had your recline.

Not true. I hate babies.

i have kids anf i ve flown a lot with them. Not all of those carseats are bulky and if parents want to they can definitely buy a smaller seat that does not prevent other seats from reclining (aside from perhaps most tight rj seats..)
my guess is many parents who do not travel much have no idea that their oversized carseats designed for suv barely fit on airplane...

I don't fly United often, but of my last 4 flights with them, I encountered 3 seats with problems. So my impression of United's seat map and various other descriptions of their products is that much it is wishful thinking on United's part. YMMV.

No, one of the main benefits of using a child's familiar safety seat is that the kid is likely to sleep better and fuss less during the flight because they are in a familiar situation. There's also hard landings, which in my experience occur more often on UA than other carriers. (especially at LAX, what is the issue with UA at LAX?)

In this part of the world, a lot more of the former than the latter.

For example, the last US major (not counting regional carriers) to have a crash with fatalities was AA in November 2001. Even if you include regionals, without looking it up, I think you'd have to go back close to a decade to find one.

Interesting post. I had something like this happen a few years back. I was standing at the galley, thanking passengers after arrival, and a slight altercation broke out. Seems the parents had arranged a carrier in such a way, that the passenger in front could not recline. The parents were completely unaware this had happened, and apologized repeatedly, but the lady sitting in front of them felt that wasn't good enough, and made quite a scene, which lead to her pushing a flight attendant out of the way, and a prompt meet and greet from the Port Authority Police.

Moral of the story, it's possible the parents had no clue they were blocking the recline. In the future, mention it to the cabin crew, and see if they can assist. Sometimes these things can be resolved easily. :)

can we send the topic of car seat use back to to travel with children forum - this was beaten to death there while the same claims without any factual support were made again and again by the very same posters..

Personally I'd prefer no seats recline! I'm a person that rarely reclines (I can slouch and sleep) so it really pisses me off when people recline during food service, or on aircrafts where the space is already quite strained.

That being said, you're not entitled to recline. You did get a stroke of bad luck being in front of the baby seat (I've actually never seen anyone use one on a plane, didn't know that was a thing) so if the plane was full and you couldn't move to another seat, sorry, here's some of your miles back. Problem solved. If the flight had open seats that you refused to use, then this is on you.

Not only do some airlines not have recline, AFAIK all airlines have some seats that don't recline at all due to the emergency exit rows. Those pax pay the same as you do, in fact sometimes more to get a little bit of extra leg room, but with no recline.

Ultimately you got some miles, no one harmed you, no one used those clips or whatever to stop your recline, just bad luck, move on.

Question. If the baby seat constrains recline of the seat in front, is there adequate emergency egress for people sitting in that row? Are they limiting use of this way of placing the seat to window seats only?
Honest question. I really haven't had one in my row and never noticed.

Needs to be in a window seat or the middle seat of the middle section.

People should be happy when there's a baby in a carseat instead of a lap child. Better odds the baby will sleep, less chance of the baby becoming a projectile. Something that parents should be commended for paying for a seat for an infant in a carseat.

Thanks. Wasn't aware of the rules. They make sense. I absolutely agree about their calming advantage for the young flyer.
And now FT can give the collective "if you didn't want your recline limited, you shouldn't have booked that seat...you know the rules" :D

I wonder if there has been studies on the added risk of injury to the person on the front when the not so perfectly installed baby seat crashes in to the back of their seat. I doubt these seats are certified where they physically push the seat on front them forward. Also these seats certainly will slow down the parents ability to remove their baby in an emergency evacuation. So while there is certainly a clear benefit in turbulence I actually don't think there is much help in an actual crash situation because the expedited exit of an air frame is so crucial in survival of crash landing. Still I did end up using a seat for out baby, mostly because she sleeps better in it.