Comment by areoform
2 days ago
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
I work in child car seat development and I can second that the main issue for our mechanical engineers is preventing neck injuries. Rearward-facing car seats really are a lot better on that front.
ADAC is indeed the main test, but even more difficult than getting a good ADAC score is passing the plus test[1], which focuses on neck spinal forces.
[1]: https://www.vti.se/en/services/laboratory-and-testing/crash-...
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The vast majority of the rest of the world simply doesn't use car seats at all. Even here in the US, in my very multinational city, I only see one demographic that consistently uses car seats at all, regardless of economic status.
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> I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's
How do you define piss poor? The stats show that the US minimum standards still reduce fatal injury risks substantially. And your comparison point for 'rest of the world' is a German automobile club, not a government regulation. Would the better comparison be to ECE R129 for the EU?
> something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there
You know that the information is readily available and you could avoid spreading misinformation with a 10 second search, right?
The US regulation, FMVSS 213/213A, does a frontal crash at 30 mph as well as a side crash test at 30 mph. For apples-to-apples comparison, the EU regulation does a 31 mph frontal crash test and a 19 mph side test. All of the governmental tests are done on a standardized test bench. The German auto club test is 40 mph frontal and 31 mph side, done in a regular car.
There are also organizations in the US that do testing and ranking beyond the regulatory minimums.
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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
I do (barely) buy this for car seats. It obviously makes no sense for the baby carriers that the article is talking about.
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Nobody is going to survive a crash where a 3 lb soft wearable baby carrier is travelling at a high enough relative speed to do any damage.
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Really? Flight staff are checking to make sure everyone wears a seatbelt. Check the carriers, too. Seems like a non-issue.
What parent in their right mind is bothering to bring a baby carrier and can’t manage to secure it?
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Turbulence that loosens objects is very common.
My guy a car seat will do nothing in a crash.
Yeah we're flying in aluminum cans with hundreds of pounds of luggage above our heads held in by doors with doors that regularly malfunction. The occasional baby seat that might become a projectile seems low on the list of things likely to impact me, much less change the outcome appreciably in a crash.
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This isn't about car seats, it's about baby carriers, and it's not about protecting you in a car crash:
> When our babies were little, carriers were massively helpful in flying. The baby likes it, and your arms are free.
> The carrier means the baby can sleep wherever we are, and I can have my hands free. If you can breastfeed in the carrier, even better because the baby can eat as you’re navigating the airport, etc. Carrying the baby centered on your body is easier on your back than carrying them in the carseat. Plus it’s good for walking / sightseeing at your destination.
In this context the baby that isn't strapped in is the loose object. The use of car seats and harnesses is not just about a full loss of control of the aircraft and resulting crash.
It’s at least got a 5-point harness and head and side guards which is something no adult on the plane has.
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.
We actively use ours and it's never been an issue. Simply, lift the tray on the chair behind you, slip the harness over, and close the tray. Normally, families with small children get to pre-board, so we have it setup before the other passengers have arrived. Even after, we've never had any push back.
Notably, though, German carriers like Lufthansa do not allow it, which I believe is due to German regulations. Outside of that, we've never had an issue in either the U.S. or Europe, but occasionally we need to show the airline a copy of their policy from their website on one of our phones. They weren't mean about it, but may not have seen one. Generally, the senior flight attendant is experienced enough to know the rules.
Our kids were huge, so we used it from before they were a year old and it has been very helpful.
It did work with the tray tables at the time (underneath, while open or shut). This was about 4 years ago when we last used it. Passenger behind us was more curious than upset.
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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.
I don't disagree with that. To me, that implies that there should be better established standards. The parent comment described some of the mechanisms, but stopped short of suggesting that they become standard, which I think is why I was sort of confused.
>This may sound idiotic, but it also prevents other "creative" solutions where airlines sacrifice safety willingly to spend less money.
Everyone loves to say this from the comfort of their arm chair somewhere in an ivory tower but literally every aviation and adjacent workplace has a phrase to the tune of "here we cut stupid corners, cutting smart ones is illegal"
Which is to say, the do-gooders in their infinite wisdom have blocked progress on various axis, some of them no-brainers, some of them the most reasonable ones, because once upon a time someone took it too far and something happened. So all investigation of where to save money, where to find improvement, etc, etc, happens on axis of optimization that are frequently absurd. This is where most of the "creative" solutions you deride come from.
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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.
Rigid carriers are allowed today, and get belted in. The post is about allowing soft babywearing carriers.
> 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.
Any suggestions on how I might clean up the wording? Currently I have: "In fact, one specific place where I'd like to see this thinking applied is adjacent to this rule: babywearing carriers on planes."
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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.
There indeed seem to be a lot of folks commenting who think being able to safely have a car seat on a plane would be a revolutionary change, when that's the part that's a solved problem.
It isn't that surprising given that hackernews tends to skew tin demographics towards young men. And people who don't read articles but have strong opinions on everything.
I've updated the title to include "babywearing" to try to make it clearer.
> 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.
There was a paper claiming that: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046
But I don't buy it: https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats
Got any data to back up the fact?
I got anecdata of people shopping for gargantuan 3-row SUVs so they can accommodate the third child seat. Most people don’t seem to mind as it’s “only” a monthly payment. (Over 8 years it’s a fortune in interest let alone the actual cost of the vehicle but most people don’t think that far ahead)
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That’s great? You shouldn’t have kids if you can’t stand the slightest temporary inconvenience such as… providing them safe transportation.
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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.
I've only done one return flight with Thai Airways (LHR-BKK) with a child seat, but it's only allowed by a window seat or in the middle seat in a 3x3x3 configuration. Probably standard but I didn't check for a while.
(Sorry, meant to reply to parent)
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>In this scenario, there isn't going to be evacuation. At best, it's search and rescue. At worst, search and recovery.
Scenarios without evacuations are ones where nearly everyone or everyone is already dead. That’s not a case to optimize for.
Thing is a rigid car seat is what you ARE allowed.
how common are airpoane crash injuries?
Why do you think that matters?
Why would it not matter? Everything in safety culture is making the risks acceptable. Why does ETOPS exist when we could just disallow planes with twin-engine aircraft entirely?
>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.
What do you think people are attaching the already approved rigid car seats to the aircraft with?
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You're right, I forgot that's impossible with a carrier seat.
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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.