baby flying in car seat or not???

[lexie32]

sorry to ask another question on car seats, but we are flying with our ds who will be 11 months in sept and not sure what to do, and any advice would be much appreciated!!
We have booked him a seat ( we are braving tcd for the 1st time always flown virgin before!!) so here are our options as we see them:-


a) strap car seat into plane seat and limit his movment- great for a couple of hours but unfair for whole journey!!!

b) check car seat into hold and travel with ds on my lap for take off and landing leving him space to play between us!(worried about damage to expensive car seat)

c) (my favouite) hire car seat for 1 day when we get there and buy a second from walmart as they are much cheaper than in the uk so we then have one in each car when we get home!

am already getting obsessed with planning have only got 4 1/2 months to go!!!

 

[pauldents]

sorry to ask another question on car seats, but we are flying with our ds who will be 11 months in sept and not sure what to do, and any advice would be much appreciated!!
We have booked him a seat ( we are braving tcd for the 1st time always flown virgin before!!) so here are our options as we see them:-


a) strap car seat into plane seat and limit his movment- great for a couple of hours but unfair for whole journey!!!

b) check car seat into hold and travel with ds on my lap for take off and landing leving him space to play between us!(worried about damage to expensive car seat)

c) (my favouite) hire car seat for 1 day when we get there and buy a second from walmart as they are much cheaper than in the uk so we then have one in each car when we get home!

am already getting obsessed with planning have only got 4 1/2 months to go!!!

IMHO go for option A.

At check-in they will more than likely put you in bulkhead seats, so you should have the sky-cot to use and you can also have your son on your lap with an extension to the seat belt.

We took our 18 month old daughter last September and I wish I had I taken the car seat because the Dollar hire seats were'nt that good.

We left the pram at home too and went straight to Walmart (sand lake rd.) only to find everything they sold was cheap rubbish.

They following morning we went upto Babies R Us on East Colonial Dr. (downtown) and ended up buying a proper pram. They had a good selection of car seats as well.

 

[kristieuk]

You need to check before you fly whether your car seat meets Civil Aviation standards. I can't remember what this is, but I think it has something to do with whether it is a three point belt or not.

When my daughter was 2, (therefore we didn't qualify got bulkhead seats), BA let us use hers, but to be honest, it was a bit of a pain because it was quite big, and didn't fit very well between her seat and the seat in front. She did sleep, but when the fasten seat belt sign came on, we had to take her out and strap her into her plane seat and put her car seat in the lockers. This only happened once, so it wasn't too bad, but any more than that and it would have been a nightmare.

Every time we flew before she was 2, we had bulkhead seats. I don't know how other carriers fare, but BA has a choice between a skycot, or their own car seat style chair. It's the same deal - you have to take them out and strap them on your lap when the seatbelt sign is on.

If I were you, I would call the airline and request bulkhead seats - they won't normally guarantee you but we have never had a problem. Then you should have no problem on the flight over, and you can buy your spare seat over there, and perhaps put it in the hold on the way back - they are pretty sturdy things for obvious reasons!