There is a deeper issue, in a crash, a poorly secured rigid baby carrier seat becomes a potentially lethal projectile. Worst comes to worst, today, the projectile is an infant. An infant is substantially softer and less massive than a rigid seat containing an infant.
For soft babywearing carriers, the outlook is also grim. The kinematics of the baby, adult, carrier and airplane seat lead to crush injuries that are worse than the poorly restrained arm hold version.
Could there be a solution here that straps around a seat to give babies a safe seat?
Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be easy to use or consumer friendly. The ideal solution would have the baby with their back facing front, and the attached carrier facing inwards towards the seat. It would have to be carefully specced and tested so no unverified, third-party seats... Logically extrapolated, in this scenario, the airline becomes responsible for the baby's wellbeing. And I don't think that's a good place for the airlines to be?
I think the challenge here might be that, as the article says, this is all just hypothetical and hasn't been empirically tested. It also sounds like a lot of the reasoning predates modern babywearing equipment quite a bit.
With our kids, we used two different devices. One was just a long strip of cloth that you tie in a special way. The other was a more structured carrier with straps and buckles and all that good stuff. For both of them, the child faces toward the parent, so they would be rear-facing relative to the plane. And both have an option to fully support the head. The main purpose there is just to protect their neck while sleeping or during moderate activity, but it would offer at least some additional protection against neck injuries in a crash, rough landing, or during periods of turbulence.
Perhaps crush injuries are more likely with the baby strapped to you, but honestly I would be more worried about a parent holding their baby being more likely to drop them in the aisle during an evacuation, which would be more likely to endanger everyone behind them on the plane as well.
I think this is very true. the general consensus from NCPS techs we've talked to is that the most likely fatal injury to a child is spinal - their heads are extremely heavy relative to the rest of their body in infancy so the 'safest' seats tend to be the ones that distribute kinetics away or absorb it (like rear-facing seats where the sudden 'stop' pushes into the seat rather than having the baby's head fly forward)
that said, I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's. something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there. Germany's ADAC is supposedly the gold standard and I can see why - their tests are intensely comprehensive and granular, in the way you'd actually want them to be, and many of the seats rated safe by American standards fail ADAC: https://www.besafe.com/en/safety-tips/tests-awards/adac/
if there were to be a plane-oriented solution, the last place I'd trust it to be taken forward is in the USA especially given how easily corruptible safety-oriented institutions are here
> For soft babywearing carriers, the outlook is also grim. The kinematics of the baby, adult, carrier and airplane seat lead to crush injuries that are worse than the poorly restrained arm hold version.
The point is that the "return" - in a vanishingly tiny number of cases, the kinematics is very slightly better (maybe I buy that it is slightly better, without doing research, but it can't possibly be much better) - is not at all worth the "investment" - every single parent of every single baby on every single flight having to put up with a very real annoyance.
Not sure how much we need to optimize for this. Plane crashes are rare. I'm happy to risk a baby seat crashing into me if my plane crashes if it means the 99.99987% of the flights are slightly better.
The math is more that benefits aren't that great and the dangers are pretty big, especially if someone fails to properly secure the carrier and you get a rejected takeoff
There is an easy and FAA-approved child restraint system called CARES. My wife and I purchased one and used it with great success. The flight attendants had never seen one, so it comes with a card for you to show them.
> Logically extrapolated, in this scenario, the airline becomes responsible for the baby's wellbeing. And I don't think that's a good place for the airlines to be?
Aren't airlines responsible for the well-being of everyone on a plane? That seems like it kind of goes with the territory of charging money for hurtling people across the sky in a giant metal box.
I think this is ill-phrased, but true. It isn't about being responsible for wellbeing, it is about legal liability in case of accidents.
If you (as the airline) did what the rules where that everybody else follows and the FAA mandates and the baby dies you can argue you did everything correctly and the rules are at fault.
If you however go your own special, non-FAA-approved solution, typically the burden of proof that this special solution is at least up to par with existing certified standards is on you, the airline and if a baby dies it is on you alone to defend that solution.
Meaning from the standpoint of an airline there is not a lot to gain, but much to lose if they do things outside established standards.
This may sound idiotic, but it also prevents other "creative" solutions where airlines sacrifice safety willingly to spend less money.
If you have lethal babies and/or lethal rigid carriers flying around an airplane in a crash, I think you've got a severe enough crash that most of these arguments are picking bellybutton lint. I'd vastly prefer the FAA focus on the rulemaking around ensuring that I'm not in such a crash than worry about what happens if I'm in such a crash. The chances that I get into an accident which is severe enough that I get killed by a flying baby, but I would have otherwise survived, are exceptionally low.
A heavy rigid object can cause injury in regular turbulence. No crash needed. That would be the danger I’d want tested for. And unless the person bringing the carrier is expected to be liable when their carrier injures someone, it winds up being another liability for the airlines.
> a poorly secured rigid baby carrier seat becomes a potentially lethal projectile
Rigid carriers are already permitted on planes, as long as they're FAA approved (which many are). You attach them with the seatbelt, and the flight attendants check.
What I'm proposing in this post is that the FAA not require parents to remove lab infants from babywearing carriers.
From the comments here, many people don’t get the difference. If you’ve never flown with a kid, there is a nuance that is easy to miss.
I was going to make a comment earlier about how my kids travelled in car seats years ago before I realized you were talking about lap kids without their own seat.
I'm surprised at the amount of people here confusing carriers with car seats. It seemed obvious enough to me in the article. It's about wearing babies on the plane, not babies sitting in their own seat.
> Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be easy to use or consumer friendly. The ideal solution would have the baby with their back facing front, and the attached carrier facing inwards towards the seat.
There is an existing international standard (ISO 13216) for child safety seats in cars:
I don't think that's actually what the FAA has reasoned.
FAA calls all of these devices, in general, child restraint systems. Rigid seats with harnesses are allowed under FAA rules. The real consideration is blocked egress, since a large, rigid device strapped to a seat could actually make egress more challenging. That is covered in a more subjective advisory circular, which allows airlines to make policy, e.g., it may only be used at a window seat of a non-exit row.
Since FAA just this month has decided to start enforcing a 1992 rule requiring even so much as a paper cup to be stowed before pushback citing the egress concern, we might even expect some new policy on this.
The vast majority of airplane incidents with injuries are not a total loss with most people dead.
Hard landings, rough turbulence, runway excursions, etc are far more common and also situations where differences in restraints make meaningful differences in outcomes.
That solution already exists actually. You buy a ticket/seat for the infant and use an FAA approved carrier. For example, the nuna pipa rx is FAA approved for this use.
It's not a popular choice because you have to pay full price for the seat, so lap-carrying the baby can save quite a bit of money. Once the baby is 2, you can no longer lap carry them, so that option goes away. There's FAA approved options for small children for whom the lap belt would be inappropriate that are different from the infant seats.
I would settle for being allowed to use something like the CARES universally which is currently a total crapshoot. Even car seats are still a challenge if traveling internationally. We’re advised to do all this stuff to keep our kids safe but the airlines and plane manufacturers and fitters don’t really do anything to support it globally. In a couple days I get to carry a car seat around Europe because the airline won’t let me use anything else.
Can you link your kinematics? Modern science is much closer to the priests of old. Academics leverage their credentials to present untested predictions as science. Their ideas are considered correct because of their expertise and the institutions they belong to, not because the ideas have been thoroughly tested.
In this scenario, there isn't going to be evacuation. At best, it's search and rescue. At worst, search and recovery.
The poorly attached rigid seat, with a well-secured infant, increases the infant's odds of survival, but the mass increase reduces everyone else's odds of survival (including other infants and caregivers).
There are designs and policies where it becomes "worth it." But it would have to be study to figure out at what point the tradeoff becomes worth it.
It's a grim outcome, but great safety engineering is built on the worst case taken seriously.
Can you explain your reasoning why is that the case with carrier seats but not with <literally_every_other_hard_object> including human bodies and their skulls which are way sturdier than plastic moldings?
Most airlines offer bassinets for babies. You can only get them in front rows where they get attached to the wall in front of the seats. They’ve got a mesh top that your supposed to keep zipped up while the baby is in there.
Bassinets are only available in the wide-body airplanes, and only a few select domestic US routes are even flying those. And even then, the plane bassinets are tiny, and most infants outgrow them by 6mo. And purely anecdotal observation is that most flights I've been on had way more infants in the cabin than places to install bassinets.
I'll bet that is less of an issue than the issue of evacuation.
Currently, aircraft seatbelts are designed for very quick release when needed with no training or muscle memory needed, shove your hand at your waist and pull the metal flap and it immediately comes apart. This seems like it could be an issue with baby carriers, since a) you can probably expect a bit more complex arrangement of straps buckles and b) lack of muscle memory or training on presumably a different style of carrier than what you ever ever use outside an airplane.
A second issue that comes to mind, how to do seating arrangements? Imagine a parent struggling to remove baby during a emergency. Imagine a 3 seat row window side, where others are stuck waiting for parent to release baby.
Certified rigid car seats are already allowed onboard and pretty much every airline you've ever flown on has clear guidelines on which seats they can be placed in for exactly that reason.
The decision to not require seats is one of the best regulatory decisions I have ever heard of, and I wish this kind of thought process was more present in all kinds of places. The funny thing is that, I bet if it were used more broadly, given the absolutely enormous safety advantage that flying has over basically any other mode of transportation, there would be a non trivial number of other flight safety regulations that would get reconsidered.
Going back to pre-9/11 security screening would probably save lives. The extra time & hassle required to get through security (and the fact that only passengers can go through) means that some people drive instead of fly. Driving is less safe than flying, so some of those people die in car wrecks.
> The extra time & hassle required to get through security (and the fact that only passengers can go through) means that some people drive instead of fly.
I suspect it leads to more people not travelling at all (or much shorter distances) and net saves lives in both the relatively immediate travel sense and even moreso in the broader analysis including net carbon emissions and their effect in climate change.
(It is still a mix of corrupt corporatism and authoritarian conditioning that should be ended for that reason.)
I would argue that high speed regional rail would address this as well. How many flights from regional airports to major hubs could be eliminated with a decent train?
Do you have any evidence on this? As a personal anecdote, driving is as much a hassle if not more than flying, depending on the distance. I care more about cost first and time second. Even if you buffer in getting to the airport 2 hours early, flying is almost certainly the fastest (compared to driving and train, if available) unless you're flying from like, bos -> nyc. Security at airports hasnt felt like a hassle for me in years (at least the past six years).
I had two recent trips to the same destination. I drove once because it was so much cheaper (during the world cup when air fare was jacked up) compared to the train or flying. I flew the other time, because it was only a little more expensive and flying is faster and less of a hassle, actually.
Additionally, given the article talks about families, the cost comes down a lot with multiple people in one car vs multiple plane tickets. If we want to make travel safer by putting fewer cars on the road, make alternatives cheaper. They're already more convenient to me...
> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead.
Is this really why the rule was made? Did they really have safety of driving in mind or is this just in the interest of the profits of airlines?
It seems like if they really had safety in mind there are better solutions:
* Subsidize the 2nd seat for parents with children from tax dollars
> Is this really why the rule was made? Did they really have safety of driving in mind or is this just in the interest of the profits of airlines?
Yes. There are multiple public documents showing this, ex:
> The FAA has determined it is not appropriate to mandate the use of CRSs in aircraft now. We remain concerned that if we require children under 2 years old to be in an approved restraint system (which requires a passenger seat), affected operators might find it necessary to charge a fare for transporting these children. (Currently most, if not all, operators do not charge a fare for children under 2 years old who are held in an adult's lap.) In turn, for economic reasons some adults might decide to drive in automobiles to their destinations rather than fly. The FAA is concerned because automobile injury and fatality rates are higher than aircraft injury and fatality rates. As a result, there would be a net increase in transportation injuries and fatalities as families opt, for economic reasons, to drive rather than fly to their destinations.
I have a unique perspective on this as a former federal rulemaker. One thing you should know is that when it comes to rulemaking, the FAA isn't an ordinary rulemaker--they do the most of it and they're the best in the business. When I went to my intro to rule making classes, the FAA always rolled deep.
If you want a change and you want to make sure the right people see your request, I suggest you start here:
As a student pilot, I got confused by a sign in the aeronautical charts, and wrote to the faa.
I got to present in front of the aeronautical charting group, they discussed, and took up my change. It was a surreal experience. The level of depth, care, and just breadth of considerations to flip every possible stone to make flying infinitessimally safer was truly awe inspiring. The fact that me, a at-the-time-not-yet-even private pilot, was heard and taken super seriously, was equally amazing. Fully agree -- these people are the best in the biz.
They do when appropriate after considering all concerns. The NTSB is solely concerned with safety. The best rulemaking is not literally safety-first or nothing would actually get done.
As a parent of 3 kids and an extensive baby-carrier user, I see your argument but I think you're lacking consideration of the failure modes.
Yes, almost every baby carrier would likely restrain the infant better than add-on infant belt if the adult lap belt rides up over the infant carrier, the infant's going to be crushed between the adult and the belt. Not a good outcome.
Thus you're likely going to need FAA-approved infant carriers, same way as you'd need FAA-approved car seats you can take on planes.
I dunno, I flew UK-IRL this summer and in both directions I just threaded the baby-belt (standard issue here, the cabin crew hand them out before the safety briefing) around the carrier and the sleeping baby.
In a full on crash situation infants are not going to do well, so optimising for much more likely turbulence injuries (for which having the baby strapped as securely as possible is definitely a good idea!) seems more important.
I think this is a way that airlines and the FFA could continue to grow in consideration. At some point the economics of flying with children starts to make less and less sense. I just flew with a toddler that was under 2 from the mainland US to Hawaii and back. The toddler is just under 2 so he was considered a lap child to fly free. However at 2 the child for most airlines graduates to a full price ticket. At that point it seems less and less likely for families to want to fly over driving. Then add more children you are spending something of a small fortune to fly anywhere. It seems like the airlines could capture more business if they could price into their model a discounted ticket for children older than 2 but under a certain age (ie. 13 or 10).
But why? They weigh slightly less, but take up a seat. Why should a child be subsidized. Planes are typically full or close to full. The airline doesn't really care what age the butt is in the seat, just that it's a revenue passenger.
Yeah, and as someone who just travelled with three young kids I don’t think my party cost the airline less than our number of seats, probably a lot more. We required more attention from staff, made a bigger mess, and didn’t bring less stuff per person just because the kids are small.
Kids are already subsidized with free gate checking of strollers (to be fair, so are other things like skis on Alaska).
You all have some fair points. I was thinking about it as more of a business opportunity for the airlines to attract more families to fly over driving. As I said before the economics start to become more prohibitive to fly vs driving the more passengers. Its not unreasonable to think this way. Airlines give out other incentives for loyalty or just generally having enough airline points. Why not like family packages to attract families that wouldn't otherwise go to get more business
Flying from US to Europe we ended up paying charges roughly equivalent to 1/4 the price of the adult ticket for a lap infant. Now he’s 2 we pay about 2/3rds the adult ticket price until he’s 12 and get a seat and a cabin baggage allowance so it ends up not very different to paying for one checked bag and lap infant.
Relatedly, I wish I could bring my electric wheelchair with me in the cabin. I went on a work trip to Paris in April and sitting in a regular seat was just as uncomfortable as I remember. Fortunately, halfway through the first flight one of the attendants noticed my caregiver frequently repositioning me and had the other person in our row move elsewhere so that I could lie down across two seats. American Airlines allowed me to do that on the return flight as well.
I was quite worried that my wheelchair would break in some way like I've experienced several times before but everything went quite smoothly! AI helped tremendously with planning, e.g. here's Claude: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/6c977d23-1b7c-4a00-a7aa-d...
Sort of tangential to the rulemaking discussion but I’ve had two flight attendants note that unbuckling the carrier during takeoff and landing is required due to the risk of breaking the child’s back.
If the adult is pitched forward with the child strapped to their chest (facing inward) then they risk bending the child’s spine backwards.
This never happened to me when I had babies, thank god, but I would almost certainly have politely said "no" to this request. It isn't very fair to the flight attendant who is just trying to do their job, to force them to figure out how to handle an uncooperative parent with a sleeping baby, but IMO it's a very reasonable battle to pick. I think essentially every flight attendant would just let it go.
Flight attendants, like mostly anyone else, have a job to do. Much of their job involves keeping hundreds of people safe at the same time. Not obeying a FA's order is a federal crime and could be a felony.
> I think essentially every flight attendant would just let it go.
I predict they will not let it go, and it will escalate to escorting you off the plane. It's a violation of federal law to allow you to keep your child strapped in, and the attendant risks losing their job.
Just be very careful with this. Flight attendants have the force of law behind them and you never know when they'll decide the right way to handle an uncooperative passenger is to have police meet the plane when you land.
> A lap-belt restrained adult dummy in an aircraft seat, with an infant dummy in a carrier, was subjected to a 9G dynamic sled test. The severity of the pulse was based on the results of a static load test. The commercially available infant carriers tested were not able to restrain infants under crash situations.
The missing comparison is to a parent holding the baby in their arms, which I expect would also fail a 9G test. We're not making babies safer by requiring parents to take them out of babywearing carriers.
It's been awhile since I used one so maybe I'm misremembering, but isn't the brace position for a lap infant basically the same as what a rear facing soft baby carrier does naturally?
It seems strange to disallow the carrier, have the belt that loops through the adult belt but then if the plane is going down you have to get them into the same position they'll be in in the carrier anyway!
Last time I flew internationally the stewardess gave us a loop shaped harness that hooked onto our seatbelt and went around the babies lap. Doesn't this provide a middle ground between needing to hold the baby with your arm and a car seat?
On that note, please don't let your furry companion into your lap while you drive a vehicle. You don't want to find out what happens to them if an airbag deploys.
It’s like a front backpack where the baby is facing the wearer and is supported up to the neck. Something like this https://share.google/cGaL54ZtqoxDq18zv
We should also allow window seat people to have their table down during take-off and landing. The only reason for it is delaying evacuation but in window you only delay yourself. Makes no sense to mandate that.
I think what’s better is modular seats. The interior of the airplane is empty with harnesses all over the floor, and based on the passengers the seats get customized. A baby? A carrier seat is put there. Disabled? They can use their own as long as it fulfills the specs. Fat person? Combo seat. Someone wants to sleep? A bed-like is added, and so on. Plus the arrangement inside can be easily reshaped for best experience
It’s not a big issue, by the time they are loading/unloading the luggage, it can be done. It should be designed in a way that can be easily attached or detached, or even automated/robot based rails does the job quickly.
So for example: while booking you get to select those options, and while they load the luggage, an app on some crew tablet quickly arrange the seats and hit submit, the rails automatically do the jobs! Ycombinator, prepare that VC funds!! ;)
"All things considered" is easily attacked by vultures and businesses typically pick it apart.
PFAS bans are another where the whole class is likely hazardous but EPA will continue chasing specific molecules rather than consider the whole class.
Now adays, chem engineering will just put different monomers in and move on untill 20 years and we find, all things considered, it still reaches humans at toxic levels.
Put on some headphones and mind your own business. No one's vacation is "ruined" by a crying baby on the flight. You will survive it and are free to enjoy the rest of your trip.
No one travels with babies for fun, visiting my terminally Ill mother over the several years of her decline was indeed a nightmare with young children, we would not have put ourselves through that otherwise.
I have encountered this many times flying so it’s not “no one”. It’s usually younger couples who either don’t know what they are getting into or just have the energy to deal with it.
On international flights from the US it’s common to hear the reason is to bring the baby to see extended family.
> Where is SO important that you need to take a baby with you on a plane?
I would guess that in most cases, someone is flying with an infant because they are going somewhere important and traveling with their infant was the best option available to them.
Traveling by air (or at all) with an infant is not fun and I can’t imagine that ever being anyone’s first choice.
So when you see frazzled parents at the airport with their young children, assume the best and be kind.
I flew with my six month old a while back with no issues. Gave her a bottle on both the ascent and the descent so her ears would pop and that worked perfectly.
She slept like a baby for most of the 5 hour flight and only cried once for maybe 60 seconds when she got hungry and I had to prep a bottle.
It definitely didn't seem like "babies experience a lot of pain" holds true at all if you plan for it
Good thing you spawned into the world as a fully formed adult and never had to be a burden on society, unlike all these other _kids_ and their greedy parents.
Can you truly not think of a long list of things that are important enough and far enough away that it makes sense to take a baby on a plane? I could start writing you a list, but it seems like you should probably think about it for more than two seconds first.
Do you seriously think that parents are flying with infants for the lolz? The vast majority are not. It’s a major operation for both child and parents.
“What is so important that you need to take a baby on a plane” and “Have you thought about driving instead?” have got to be some of the most clueless and unempathic takes I’ve ever read. Ironic considering that’s what you’re accusing parents of.
I mean sure, you have your lived experience, I can respect that. As for my lived experience, most of the families with children that I come into contact with on planes are going away for their first vacation together. Entirely optional.
What is so important that you need to get on a plane?
See this is what has bugged me so much about how common anti-natalism has become. It has become diluted but present everywhere.
Children are a part of our society. They are a part of your community. They are going to be around you, they are going to be where you don’t want them to be, they are just going to be present in general. And this can’t possibly be a safety argument, as planes I believe are the safest mode of transportation. If you’re worried about safety, then kids should never get in cars, which is also completely unfeasible.
So if it’s not about safety, then what is this really about?
Regardless of what it is, I as an adult have full autonomy to do that, understand the pain in my ears that I will experience, and will do my best not to disrupt those around me. I also don't become a small baby-sized fleshy projectile on impact.
I prefer the Fran Lebowitz suggestion : a separate plane with no seats for children, they can float round the whole trip from takeoff to landing. also let's option the adult plane with opening windows so we can smoke again.
Oh no, you have to take your baby out and hold it during all the times when you have to have everything stowed and can't do much of anything else anyway, whatever shall we do, won't someone think of the children? This is a non-issue, and not worthy of a blog post.
People are free to write whatever they want on their blogs, and you are free to not read their post or comment about it.
I really don't understand people who accept inconveniences for themselves or for other people without any interest in examining whether those inconveniences are serving any useful purpose. Everything like this should be interrogated. Yes, most things don't matter at all, but we still shouldn't do them if they're dumb. Some things - like this example - matter a bit more. It's not the end of the world, but waking up a sleeping baby can easily ruin the rest of a family's day. If there is a good reason for that, then no biggie, if the reason is nonsensical, then no.
If they do then I hope there is an additional rule forcing the guardian to purchase an adjacent seat, so there's no risk of someone (me) being guilt tripped into swapping seats.
This sounds like a different problem than the one this post is about. For baby-in-lap, no one is being guilt tripped into switching seats because the baby doesn’t have a seat.
If you’re being guilt tripped into switching seats so that a family with a young child can sit together, consider blaming the airline for not automatically seating a young child next to their guardian.
This is addressed in the first paragraph of the article.
> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead. Since driving is far less safe than flying, a ban would lead to more deaths. I'd love to see more of this "all things considered" thinking around bans.
> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead. Since driving is far less safe than flying, a ban would lead to more deaths. I'd love to see more of this "all things considered" thinking around bans.
In terms of CO2e, a familiy of 2 + a kid driving a car instead of flying results in quite a bit of less emissions. Depending on the assumed mortality per tonne CO2e, driving might lead to a lot less deaths.
This is of course quite unreliable data, but one example of just to say how "all things considered" is very hard and almost always still comes down to a judgement call.
Yes. This. We all - and especially parents - spend all day every day evaluating risks. The FAA does not need to decide for me the level of risk between holding a baby in my arms vs having it in a sling during take off and landing. That's very silly.
There is a deeper issue, in a crash, a poorly secured rigid baby carrier seat becomes a potentially lethal projectile. Worst comes to worst, today, the projectile is an infant. An infant is substantially softer and less massive than a rigid seat containing an infant.
For soft babywearing carriers, the outlook is also grim. The kinematics of the baby, adult, carrier and airplane seat lead to crush injuries that are worse than the poorly restrained arm hold version.
Could there be a solution here that straps around a seat to give babies a safe seat?
Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be easy to use or consumer friendly. The ideal solution would have the baby with their back facing front, and the attached carrier facing inwards towards the seat. It would have to be carefully specced and tested so no unverified, third-party seats... Logically extrapolated, in this scenario, the airline becomes responsible for the baby's wellbeing. And I don't think that's a good place for the airlines to be?
I think the challenge here might be that, as the article says, this is all just hypothetical and hasn't been empirically tested. It also sounds like a lot of the reasoning predates modern babywearing equipment quite a bit.
With our kids, we used two different devices. One was just a long strip of cloth that you tie in a special way. The other was a more structured carrier with straps and buckles and all that good stuff. For both of them, the child faces toward the parent, so they would be rear-facing relative to the plane. And both have an option to fully support the head. The main purpose there is just to protect their neck while sleeping or during moderate activity, but it would offer at least some additional protection against neck injuries in a crash, rough landing, or during periods of turbulence.
Perhaps crush injuries are more likely with the baby strapped to you, but honestly I would be more worried about a parent holding their baby being more likely to drop them in the aisle during an evacuation, which would be more likely to endanger everyone behind them on the plane as well.
I think this is very true. the general consensus from NCPS techs we've talked to is that the most likely fatal injury to a child is spinal - their heads are extremely heavy relative to the rest of their body in infancy so the 'safest' seats tend to be the ones that distribute kinetics away or absorb it (like rear-facing seats where the sudden 'stop' pushes into the seat rather than having the baby's head fly forward)
that said, I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's. something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there. Germany's ADAC is supposedly the gold standard and I can see why - their tests are intensely comprehensive and granular, in the way you'd actually want them to be, and many of the seats rated safe by American standards fail ADAC: https://www.besafe.com/en/safety-tips/tests-awards/adac/
if there were to be a plane-oriented solution, the last place I'd trust it to be taken forward is in the USA especially given how easily corruptible safety-oriented institutions are here
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> For soft babywearing carriers, the outlook is also grim. The kinematics of the baby, adult, carrier and airplane seat lead to crush injuries that are worse than the poorly restrained arm hold version.
The point is that the "return" - in a vanishingly tiny number of cases, the kinematics is very slightly better (maybe I buy that it is slightly better, without doing research, but it can't possibly be much better) - is not at all worth the "investment" - every single parent of every single baby on every single flight having to put up with a very real annoyance.
Not sure how much we need to optimize for this. Plane crashes are rare. I'm happy to risk a baby seat crashing into me if my plane crashes if it means the 99.99987% of the flights are slightly better.
The math is more that benefits aren't that great and the dangers are pretty big, especially if someone fails to properly secure the carrier and you get a rejected takeoff
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Turbulence that loosens objects is very common.
My guy a car seat will do nothing in a crash.
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There is an easy and FAA-approved child restraint system called CARES. My wife and I purchased one and used it with great success. The flight attendants had never seen one, so it comes with a card for you to show them.
https://www.amsafe.com/kidsflysafe-com/
CARES is for a completely different group of kids than TFA - infants vs small children...
Haven't you got pushback that it blocks the tray table of the seat behind you? I've only heard very mixed things about CARES.
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> Logically extrapolated, in this scenario, the airline becomes responsible for the baby's wellbeing. And I don't think that's a good place for the airlines to be?
Aren't airlines responsible for the well-being of everyone on a plane? That seems like it kind of goes with the territory of charging money for hurtling people across the sky in a giant metal box.
I think this is ill-phrased, but true. It isn't about being responsible for wellbeing, it is about legal liability in case of accidents.
If you (as the airline) did what the rules where that everybody else follows and the FAA mandates and the baby dies you can argue you did everything correctly and the rules are at fault.
If you however go your own special, non-FAA-approved solution, typically the burden of proof that this special solution is at least up to par with existing certified standards is on you, the airline and if a baby dies it is on you alone to defend that solution.
Meaning from the standpoint of an airline there is not a lot to gain, but much to lose if they do things outside established standards.
This may sound idiotic, but it also prevents other "creative" solutions where airlines sacrifice safety willingly to spend less money.
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If you have lethal babies and/or lethal rigid carriers flying around an airplane in a crash, I think you've got a severe enough crash that most of these arguments are picking bellybutton lint. I'd vastly prefer the FAA focus on the rulemaking around ensuring that I'm not in such a crash than worry about what happens if I'm in such a crash. The chances that I get into an accident which is severe enough that I get killed by a flying baby, but I would have otherwise survived, are exceptionally low.
A heavy rigid object can cause injury in regular turbulence. No crash needed. That would be the danger I’d want tested for. And unless the person bringing the carrier is expected to be liable when their carrier injures someone, it winds up being another liability for the airlines.
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> a poorly secured rigid baby carrier seat becomes a potentially lethal projectile
Rigid carriers are already permitted on planes, as long as they're FAA approved (which many are). You attach them with the seatbelt, and the flight attendants check.
What I'm proposing in this post is that the FAA not require parents to remove lab infants from babywearing carriers.
From the comments here, many people don’t get the difference. If you’ve never flown with a kid, there is a nuance that is easy to miss.
I was going to make a comment earlier about how my kids travelled in car seats years ago before I realized you were talking about lap kids without their own seat.
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I'm surprised at the amount of people here confusing carriers with car seats. It seemed obvious enough to me in the article. It's about wearing babies on the plane, not babies sitting in their own seat.
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> Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be easy to use or consumer friendly. The ideal solution would have the baby with their back facing front, and the attached carrier facing inwards towards the seat.
There is an existing international standard (ISO 13216) for child safety seats in cars:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isofix
It could be added to airplanes seats.
Fun fact all these rules act as contraception. Who wants to have a third child when you can’t actually squeeze three car seats into the back of a car.
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I don't think that's actually what the FAA has reasoned.
FAA calls all of these devices, in general, child restraint systems. Rigid seats with harnesses are allowed under FAA rules. The real consideration is blocked egress, since a large, rigid device strapped to a seat could actually make egress more challenging. That is covered in a more subjective advisory circular, which allows airlines to make policy, e.g., it may only be used at a window seat of a non-exit row.
Since FAA just this month has decided to start enforcing a 1992 rule requiring even so much as a paper cup to be stowed before pushback citing the egress concern, we might even expect some new policy on this.
> There is a deeper issue, in a crash,
you'll be dead so it won't matter much.
The vast majority of airplane incidents with injuries are not a total loss with most people dead.
Hard landings, rough turbulence, runway excursions, etc are far more common and also situations where differences in restraints make meaningful differences in outcomes.
That solution already exists actually. You buy a ticket/seat for the infant and use an FAA approved carrier. For example, the nuna pipa rx is FAA approved for this use.
It's not a popular choice because you have to pay full price for the seat, so lap-carrying the baby can save quite a bit of money. Once the baby is 2, you can no longer lap carry them, so that option goes away. There's FAA approved options for small children for whom the lap belt would be inappropriate that are different from the infant seats.
I would settle for being allowed to use something like the CARES universally which is currently a total crapshoot. Even car seats are still a challenge if traveling internationally. We’re advised to do all this stuff to keep our kids safe but the airlines and plane manufacturers and fitters don’t really do anything to support it globally. In a couple days I get to carry a car seat around Europe because the airline won’t let me use anything else.
Can you link your kinematics? Modern science is much closer to the priests of old. Academics leverage their credentials to present untested predictions as science. Their ideas are considered correct because of their expertise and the institutions they belong to, not because the ideas have been thoroughly tested.
This is religion, not science.
I think most (all?) car seats for babies are designed to be used with the baby facing the rear?
Is a rigid carrier more dangerous as a projectile, or more so as an obstacle to evacuation?
Lethal projectile. 2x more mass = 2x more energy.
In this scenario, there isn't going to be evacuation. At best, it's search and rescue. At worst, search and recovery.
The poorly attached rigid seat, with a well-secured infant, increases the infant's odds of survival, but the mass increase reduces everyone else's odds of survival (including other infants and caregivers).
There are designs and policies where it becomes "worth it." But it would have to be study to figure out at what point the tradeoff becomes worth it.
It's a grim outcome, but great safety engineering is built on the worst case taken seriously.
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Thing is a rigid car seat is what you ARE allowed.
how common are airpoane crash injuries?
Why do you think that matters?
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>Worst comes to worst
I only ever heard/said this. Seeing it in print, I suddenly realize it must be "worse comes to worst"
there is a use for the other phrase (but nobody uses it this way), should the worst (thing) come to the worst (people), then... just desserts?
> a poorly secured rigid baby carrier seat becomes a potentially lethal projectile.
No it doesn't.
>a poorly secured rigid baby carrier seat becomes a potentially lethal projectile
Too smaht for me to understand.
Can you explain your reasoning why is that the case with carrier seats but not with <literally_every_other_hard_object> including human bodies and their skulls which are way sturdier than plastic moldings?
Humans are restrained by seatbelts, which are checked by cabin crew.
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Most airlines offer bassinets for babies. You can only get them in front rows where they get attached to the wall in front of the seats. They’ve got a mesh top that your supposed to keep zipped up while the baby is in there.
Bassinets are only available in the wide-body airplanes, and only a few select domestic US routes are even flying those. And even then, the plane bassinets are tiny, and most infants outgrow them by 6mo. And purely anecdotal observation is that most flights I've been on had way more infants in the cabin than places to install bassinets.
I'll bet that is less of an issue than the issue of evacuation.
Currently, aircraft seatbelts are designed for very quick release when needed with no training or muscle memory needed, shove your hand at your waist and pull the metal flap and it immediately comes apart. This seems like it could be an issue with baby carriers, since a) you can probably expect a bit more complex arrangement of straps buckles and b) lack of muscle memory or training on presumably a different style of carrier than what you ever ever use outside an airplane.
A second issue that comes to mind, how to do seating arrangements? Imagine a parent struggling to remove baby during a emergency. Imagine a 3 seat row window side, where others are stuck waiting for parent to release baby.
This seems like a certification nightmare
Certified rigid car seats are already allowed onboard and pretty much every airline you've ever flown on has clear guidelines on which seats they can be placed in for exactly that reason.
You are only allowed to have the carrier in the window seat from the flights I’ve been on.
The decision to not require seats is one of the best regulatory decisions I have ever heard of, and I wish this kind of thought process was more present in all kinds of places. The funny thing is that, I bet if it were used more broadly, given the absolutely enormous safety advantage that flying has over basically any other mode of transportation, there would be a non trivial number of other flight safety regulations that would get reconsidered.
Going back to pre-9/11 security screening would probably save lives. The extra time & hassle required to get through security (and the fact that only passengers can go through) means that some people drive instead of fly. Driving is less safe than flying, so some of those people die in car wrecks.
> The extra time & hassle required to get through security (and the fact that only passengers can go through) means that some people drive instead of fly.
I suspect it leads to more people not travelling at all (or much shorter distances) and net saves lives in both the relatively immediate travel sense and even moreso in the broader analysis including net carbon emissions and their effect in climate change.
(It is still a mix of corrupt corporatism and authoritarian conditioning that should be ended for that reason.)
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I would argue that high speed regional rail would address this as well. How many flights from regional airports to major hubs could be eliminated with a decent train?
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Do you have any evidence on this? As a personal anecdote, driving is as much a hassle if not more than flying, depending on the distance. I care more about cost first and time second. Even if you buffer in getting to the airport 2 hours early, flying is almost certainly the fastest (compared to driving and train, if available) unless you're flying from like, bos -> nyc. Security at airports hasnt felt like a hassle for me in years (at least the past six years).
I had two recent trips to the same destination. I drove once because it was so much cheaper (during the world cup when air fare was jacked up) compared to the train or flying. I flew the other time, because it was only a little more expensive and flying is faster and less of a hassle, actually.
Additionally, given the article talks about families, the cost comes down a lot with multiple people in one car vs multiple plane tickets. If we want to make travel safer by putting fewer cars on the road, make alternatives cheaper. They're already more convenient to me...
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What happens when you factor in the downstream effects of carbon emissions (based on whatever the best projects are right now)?
> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead.
Is this really why the rule was made? Did they really have safety of driving in mind or is this just in the interest of the profits of airlines?
It seems like if they really had safety in mind there are better solutions:
* Subsidize the 2nd seat for parents with children from tax dollars
* Criminalize many intentional driving violations
* Build high speed rail
> Is this really why the rule was made? Did they really have safety of driving in mind or is this just in the interest of the profits of airlines?
Yes. There are multiple public documents showing this, ex:
> The FAA has determined it is not appropriate to mandate the use of CRSs in aircraft now. We remain concerned that if we require children under 2 years old to be in an approved restraint system (which requires a passenger seat), affected operators might find it necessary to charge a fare for transporting these children. (Currently most, if not all, operators do not charge a fare for children under 2 years old who are held in an adult's lap.) In turn, for economic reasons some adults might decide to drive in automobiles to their destinations rather than fly. The FAA is concerned because automobile injury and fatality rates are higher than aircraft injury and fatality rates. As a result, there would be a net increase in transportation injuries and fatalities as families opt, for economic reasons, to drive rather than fly to their destinations.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2005/08/26/05-1678...
> * Subsidize the 2nd seat for parents with children from tax dollars
That's not something the FAA or DOT can do.
> * Criminalize many intentional driving violations
That's not something the FAA or DOT can do.
> * Build high speed rail
That's not something the FAA or DOT (unilaterally) can do.
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I have a unique perspective on this as a former federal rulemaker. One thing you should know is that when it comes to rulemaking, the FAA isn't an ordinary rulemaker--they do the most of it and they're the best in the business. When I went to my intro to rule making classes, the FAA always rolled deep.
If you want a change and you want to make sure the right people see your request, I suggest you start here:
https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/petitions
As a student pilot, I got confused by a sign in the aeronautical charts, and wrote to the faa.
I got to present in front of the aeronautical charting group, they discussed, and took up my change. It was a surreal experience. The level of depth, care, and just breadth of considerations to flip every possible stone to make flying infinitessimally safer was truly awe inspiring. The fact that me, a at-the-time-not-yet-even private pilot, was heard and taken super seriously, was equally amazing. Fully agree -- these people are the best in the biz.
Why doesn't the FAA usually implement the changes the NTSB raises after learning from crashes?
They do when appropriate after considering all concerns. The NTSB is solely concerned with safety. The best rulemaking is not literally safety-first or nothing would actually get done.
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As a parent of 3 kids and an extensive baby-carrier user, I see your argument but I think you're lacking consideration of the failure modes.
Yes, almost every baby carrier would likely restrain the infant better than add-on infant belt if the adult lap belt rides up over the infant carrier, the infant's going to be crushed between the adult and the belt. Not a good outcome.
Thus you're likely going to need FAA-approved infant carriers, same way as you'd need FAA-approved car seats you can take on planes.
I dunno, I flew UK-IRL this summer and in both directions I just threaded the baby-belt (standard issue here, the cabin crew hand them out before the safety briefing) around the carrier and the sleeping baby.
In a full on crash situation infants are not going to do well, so optimising for much more likely turbulence injuries (for which having the baby strapped as securely as possible is definitely a good idea!) seems more important.
You're doing perfect is the enemy of better.
I think this is a way that airlines and the FFA could continue to grow in consideration. At some point the economics of flying with children starts to make less and less sense. I just flew with a toddler that was under 2 from the mainland US to Hawaii and back. The toddler is just under 2 so he was considered a lap child to fly free. However at 2 the child for most airlines graduates to a full price ticket. At that point it seems less and less likely for families to want to fly over driving. Then add more children you are spending something of a small fortune to fly anywhere. It seems like the airlines could capture more business if they could price into their model a discounted ticket for children older than 2 but under a certain age (ie. 13 or 10).
But why? They weigh slightly less, but take up a seat. Why should a child be subsidized. Planes are typically full or close to full. The airline doesn't really care what age the butt is in the seat, just that it's a revenue passenger.
Yeah, and as someone who just travelled with three young kids I don’t think my party cost the airline less than our number of seats, probably a lot more. We required more attention from staff, made a bigger mess, and didn’t bring less stuff per person just because the kids are small.
Kids are already subsidized with free gate checking of strollers (to be fair, so are other things like skis on Alaska).
You all have some fair points. I was thinking about it as more of a business opportunity for the airlines to attract more families to fly over driving. As I said before the economics start to become more prohibitive to fly vs driving the more passengers. Its not unreasonable to think this way. Airlines give out other incentives for loyalty or just generally having enough airline points. Why not like family packages to attract families that wouldn't otherwise go to get more business
Flying from US to Europe we ended up paying charges roughly equivalent to 1/4 the price of the adult ticket for a lap infant. Now he’s 2 we pay about 2/3rds the adult ticket price until he’s 12 and get a seat and a cabin baggage allowance so it ends up not very different to paying for one checked bag and lap infant.
Relatedly, I wish I could bring my electric wheelchair with me in the cabin. I went on a work trip to Paris in April and sitting in a regular seat was just as uncomfortable as I remember. Fortunately, halfway through the first flight one of the attendants noticed my caregiver frequently repositioning me and had the other person in our row move elsewhere so that I could lie down across two seats. American Airlines allowed me to do that on the return flight as well.
I was quite worried that my wheelchair would break in some way like I've experienced several times before but everything went quite smoothly! AI helped tremendously with planning, e.g. here's Claude: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/6c977d23-1b7c-4a00-a7aa-d...
Sort of tangential to the rulemaking discussion but I’ve had two flight attendants note that unbuckling the carrier during takeoff and landing is required due to the risk of breaking the child’s back.
If the adult is pitched forward with the child strapped to their chest (facing inward) then they risk bending the child’s spine backwards.
The rules don't say that you have to hold your baby facing forward, and front-facing baby carriers are also banned during takeoff & landing.
Strongly agree. I’ve been made to multiple times to wake up a sleeping baby that was strapped to my chest and it feels absurd for everyone involved.
This never happened to me when I had babies, thank god, but I would almost certainly have politely said "no" to this request. It isn't very fair to the flight attendant who is just trying to do their job, to force them to figure out how to handle an uncooperative parent with a sleeping baby, but IMO it's a very reasonable battle to pick. I think essentially every flight attendant would just let it go.
Flight attendants, like mostly anyone else, have a job to do. Much of their job involves keeping hundreds of people safe at the same time. Not obeying a FA's order is a federal crime and could be a felony.
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> I think essentially every flight attendant would just let it go.
I predict they will not let it go, and it will escalate to escorting you off the plane. It's a violation of federal law to allow you to keep your child strapped in, and the attendant risks losing their job.
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Just be very careful with this. Flight attendants have the force of law behind them and you never know when they'll decide the right way to handle an uncooperative passenger is to have police meet the plane when you land.
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From sled tests done by Australia in 2022:
> A lap-belt restrained adult dummy in an aircraft seat, with an infant dummy in a carrier, was subjected to a 9G dynamic sled test. The severity of the pulse was based on the results of a static load test. The commercially available infant carriers tested were not able to restrain infants under crash situations.
https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/research-and-analysis-r...
The missing comparison is to a parent holding the baby in their arms, which I expect would also fail a 9G test. We're not making babies safer by requiring parents to take them out of babywearing carriers.
Exactly. There is no way most parents could keep ahold of a child during 9Gs, unless they have the grip strength to lift several tons.
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It's been awhile since I used one so maybe I'm misremembering, but isn't the brace position for a lap infant basically the same as what a rear facing soft baby carrier does naturally?
It seems strange to disallow the carrier, have the belt that loops through the adult belt but then if the plane is going down you have to get them into the same position they'll be in in the carrier anyway!
Tangentially related ... US school buses don't have seatbelts.
Last time I flew internationally the stewardess gave us a loop shaped harness that hooked onto our seatbelt and went around the babies lap. Doesn't this provide a middle ground between needing to hold the baby with your arm and a car seat?
On that note, please don't let your furry companion into your lap while you drive a vehicle. You don't want to find out what happens to them if an airbag deploys.
I'm OK with it if the carrier can be hermetically closed so that no sound can escape from it :)
Please adjust title to ..."Baby Carriers" for clarity
Even then... is "baby carrier" an American term? Are we talking about slings or car seats or something else?
It’s like a front backpack where the baby is facing the wearer and is supported up to the neck. Something like this https://share.google/cGaL54ZtqoxDq18zv
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I was struggling with the inversion of containment: usually planes are on carriers.
It's because that's why.
What, you don't want to allow Verizon on planes?
We should also allow window seat people to have their table down during take-off and landing. The only reason for it is delaying evacuation but in window you only delay yourself. Makes no sense to mandate that.
I think what’s better is modular seats. The interior of the airplane is empty with harnesses all over the floor, and based on the passengers the seats get customized. A baby? A carrier seat is put there. Disabled? They can use their own as long as it fulfills the specs. Fat person? Combo seat. Someone wants to sleep? A bed-like is added, and so on. Plus the arrangement inside can be easily reshaped for best experience
How much time are you imagining the crew have got between flights to tidy up the plane for the next flight?
It’s not a big issue, by the time they are loading/unloading the luggage, it can be done. It should be designed in a way that can be easily attached or detached, or even automated/robot based rails does the job quickly.
So for example: while booking you get to select those options, and while they load the luggage, an app on some crew tablet quickly arrange the seats and hit submit, the rails automatically do the jobs! Ycombinator, prepare that VC funds!! ;)
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It's only fair, since they allow planes on aircraft carriers.
When I read the title I thought it was referring to communications carriers (cell phone companies.)
Would that lead to a fractal of planes and carriers?
"All things considered" is easily attacked by vultures and businesses typically pick it apart.
PFAS bans are another where the whole class is likely hazardous but EPA will continue chasing specific molecules rather than consider the whole class.
Now adays, chem engineering will just put different monomers in and move on untill 20 years and we find, all things considered, it still reaches humans at toxic levels.
Um, maybe don't allow babies on planes.
That would make my flying a bit nicer.
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Put on some headphones and mind your own business. No one's vacation is "ruined" by a crying baby on the flight. You will survive it and are free to enjoy the rest of your trip.
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No one travels with babies for fun, visiting my terminally Ill mother over the several years of her decline was indeed a nightmare with young children, we would not have put ourselves through that otherwise.
People do travel with babies for fun and there’s nothing wrong with that! It is possible to have a good time traveling with young kids, even a baby.
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> No one travels with babies for fun
I have encountered this many times flying so it’s not “no one”. It’s usually younger couples who either don’t know what they are getting into or just have the energy to deal with it.
On international flights from the US it’s common to hear the reason is to bring the baby to see extended family.
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It's incredible how many people are willing to treat young children as second class citizens because they don't want to be inconvenienced.
We have child-free hotels, child-free restaurantes, maybe now child-free airplanes...what's next, child-free cities?
Child free cities exist in the US. The villages has a population of 150K people. They genuinely dislike young people.
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> Where is SO important that you need to take a baby with you on a plane?
I would guess that in most cases, someone is flying with an infant because they are going somewhere important and traveling with their infant was the best option available to them.
Traveling by air (or at all) with an infant is not fun and I can’t imagine that ever being anyone’s first choice.
So when you see frazzled parents at the airport with their young children, assume the best and be kind.
I flew with my six month old a while back with no issues. Gave her a bottle on both the ascent and the descent so her ears would pop and that worked perfectly.
She slept like a baby for most of the 5 hour flight and only cried once for maybe 60 seconds when she got hungry and I had to prep a bottle.
It definitely didn't seem like "babies experience a lot of pain" holds true at all if you plan for it
If parents can't take babies on planes, they'll tend to drive instead, which is much more dangerous overall.
Because my elderly parents want to see their grandchild but are too old to fly
But that’s it: we don’t do other flights with the kids
Good thing you spawned into the world as a fully formed adult and never had to be a burden on society, unlike all these other _kids_ and their greedy parents.
Can you truly not think of a long list of things that are important enough and far enough away that it makes sense to take a baby on a plane? I could start writing you a list, but it seems like you should probably think about it for more than two seconds first.
Do you seriously think that parents are flying with infants for the lolz? The vast majority are not. It’s a major operation for both child and parents.
“What is so important that you need to take a baby on a plane” and “Have you thought about driving instead?” have got to be some of the most clueless and unempathic takes I’ve ever read. Ironic considering that’s what you’re accusing parents of.
I mean sure, you have your lived experience, I can respect that. As for my lived experience, most of the families with children that I come into contact with on planes are going away for their first vacation together. Entirely optional.
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What is so important that you need to get on a plane?
See this is what has bugged me so much about how common anti-natalism has become. It has become diluted but present everywhere.
Children are a part of our society. They are a part of your community. They are going to be around you, they are going to be where you don’t want them to be, they are just going to be present in general. And this can’t possibly be a safety argument, as planes I believe are the safest mode of transportation. If you’re worried about safety, then kids should never get in cars, which is also completely unfeasible.
So if it’s not about safety, then what is this really about?
Regardless of what it is, I as an adult have full autonomy to do that, understand the pain in my ears that I will experience, and will do my best not to disrupt those around me. I also don't become a small baby-sized fleshy projectile on impact.
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I prefer the Fran Lebowitz suggestion : a separate plane with no seats for children, they can float round the whole trip from takeoff to landing. also let's option the adult plane with opening windows so we can smoke again.
here's the /s for those of you who are tonedeaf.
Personally I think babies shouldn’t be allowed on planes.
Oh no, you have to take your baby out and hold it during all the times when you have to have everything stowed and can't do much of anything else anyway, whatever shall we do, won't someone think of the children? This is a non-issue, and not worthy of a blog post.
People are free to write whatever they want on their blogs, and you are free to not read their post or comment about it.
I really don't understand people who accept inconveniences for themselves or for other people without any interest in examining whether those inconveniences are serving any useful purpose. Everything like this should be interrogated. Yes, most things don't matter at all, but we still shouldn't do them if they're dumb. Some things - like this example - matter a bit more. It's not the end of the world, but waking up a sleeping baby can easily ruin the rest of a family's day. If there is a good reason for that, then no biggie, if the reason is nonsensical, then no.
If people decide to have children, they should adapt to the world; expecting the world to adapt to them is insane.
The world doesn't exist without people.
If they do then I hope there is an additional rule forcing the guardian to purchase an adjacent seat, so there's no risk of someone (me) being guilt tripped into swapping seats.
This sounds like a different problem than the one this post is about. For baby-in-lap, no one is being guilt tripped into switching seats because the baby doesn’t have a seat.
If you’re being guilt tripped into switching seats so that a family with a young child can sit together, consider blaming the airline for not automatically seating a young child next to their guardian.
Blame the airline for not automatically seating people who buy tickets together... together. It's just a trick to get travelers to pay extra.
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This is addressed in the first paragraph of the article.
> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead. Since driving is far less safe than flying, a ban would lead to more deaths. I'd love to see more of this "all things considered" thinking around bans.
This is extremely dubious logic with very bad stats.
Vast majority of accidents happen on regular driven known routes not road trips.
I would expect far better from the FAA.
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> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead. Since driving is far less safe than flying, a ban would lead to more deaths. I'd love to see more of this "all things considered" thinking around bans.
In terms of CO2e, a familiy of 2 + a kid driving a car instead of flying results in quite a bit of less emissions. Depending on the assumed mortality per tonne CO2e, driving might lead to a lot less deaths.
This is of course quite unreliable data, but one example of just to say how "all things considered" is very hard and almost always still comes down to a judgement call.
Of course, not everything needs to be decided by the FAA. Sometimes they could let people make decisions for themselves.
Yes. This. We all - and especially parents - spend all day every day evaluating risks. The FAA does not need to decide for me the level of risk between holding a baby in my arms vs having it in a sling during take off and landing. That's very silly.
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