Airplane rules for younger kids....

[RuthieT]

Do I need to bring a car seat for my daughter that is 3.5?

 

[disneydreamerbelle]

You do not need to, however, I won't let my DS fly without one. It makes the trip so much easier for me because he can't get up and move around. He also sleeps better in it if we are dong a late night or early morning flight. You do need to make sure that yours is FAA approved or else they will make you check it which would defeat the purpose IMO.

 

[Davids-Coco]

In addition, if you are using a booster and not a car seat, they will not let you use it.

 

[garate55]

We didn't use one and my son slept fine, there was a kid across from us that screamed almost the whole 2hrs but my son never woke up.
All kids are different though, so I would do whatever you feel comfortable with.
But do check your carseat to see if you can use it. Call the airline they are most helpful(at least Alaska Airlines was).

 

[Hofmanns4]

I do not think they make you, but you should check with the airline.

We used ours on the way to Minneapolis this summer with DS2.5 I feel like he was much more comfortable in his carseat and did not fuss. However, the way the carseat fit in the airplane made his feet touch the back of the seat of the person in front of us. Everytime DS moved, he would hit the seat. It really bothered us.

On the way back, we did not use the carseat. Solved the problem of hitting the seat in front of us, but then I do not think he felt secured so he kept fussing and sliding out of the seatbelt.

 

[Wendi2000]

I would use it... especially if you are going to need it for your ground transportation at all. If she's in a booster (probably not yet at that age) you cannot use it on the plane, but if you need it for the rest of your transportation, you should gate check it.

 

[brenda1966]

Like the other poster mentioned, a car seat tends to put your kid in the perfect position to continually kick the back of the seat in front of you.

So, I'd prefer you not use it if you're sitting behind me. LOL. I've flown with my child about a dozen times and we have never used her car seat on the airplane.

 

[kylieh]

We used a car seat for our DD when she was just 3 Loved it. She felt secure and we felt a little more comfortable knowing that she would be that little safer should we hit any turbulance -Qantas installed it for us.

On the way home we weren't able to use it (long story), and she wanted to sleep. She squiggled a lot and couldn't get that just right position.

Thoroughly recommend it.

 

[CrzyforPiglet]

We've taken about 7 RT flights with our son who is now 2 and definitely prefer having him in his car seat. He seems more settled when he is in it and on our last flight when we didn't have it he was crawling all over the place but luckily only drove us nuts. As far as kicking the seat is concerned at 3.5 your daughter might be tall enough to kick the seat anyway even without the car seat. When my son was doing that I removed his shoes and it really helped.