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.
> 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
attaching a baby carrier / car seat to a vehicle seems easy, but a recent study showed that about half of US drivers had their seats installed incorrectly, and these are vehicles where the driver has unlimited time and resources to get it right.
I can't imagine that percentage goes up when strapped for time and under pressure during aircraft boarding.
> 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.
> 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 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)
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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'm not sure I disagree. I don't have numbers but, anecdotally, you sure hear a lot of "But flying is such a hassle" which is sorta true but not sure how much more than it's ever been especially if you're willing to pay a bit more. I'm not sure how many people translate that into "So I'll just drive 1,000 miles instead."
In Europe (and the US Northeast Corridor), I do favor trains to avoid going to and dealing with airports, but they're no panacea either. And I say this as someone with the various passes that make flying easier.
While I don't disagree and I think a lot of it is just nonsense security theater, it is probably worth noting that incidents of airline terrorism have fallen completely off the map in this new regime.
Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.
There's at least some element of Chesterton's fence that could come into play here.
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...
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
"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.
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.
hot take: we should instead disincentivize parents taking their very young on planes, as babies experience a lot of pain and pressure from flying at altitude, that is unnecessary. Where is SO important that you need to take a baby with you on a plane?
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.
> 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
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.
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.
This is the exact sort of take if you ever have a kid you will look back on and realize how ignorant it is.
You will not be worried about the baby in it's mother's arms if you crash land on a plane. In reality you don't want to be inconvenience. That's what happens when you live in a society full of different people though. Sometimes you have to wait as they load people in wheelchairs in planes. Sometimes a baby cries.
the discomfort in the ears becomes a non-issue if the baby sucks on something while it's happening because sucking helps readjust the pressure. having flown with a baby myself, we never had problems with that.
and if you want my personal opinion, anyone who feels crying babies are disruptive is an asshole. i am not saying that lightly. parents are not just flying for fun and letting their babies cry to torture you.
as a society we need to be more child friendly and supportive of parents. especially when they have a baby in distress. this whole idea that children should always be quiet and never bother adults is absurd, and only really found in western culture. that doesn't mean kids should be allowed to get away with anything, but a crying baby is not something that can just be stopped until the parents can identify the cause, and we should have some tolerance for that.
Children cannot fully understand what is happening to them for many, many years. This goes so far beyond planes. They don’t understand why they got jerked forward when you slammed the brakes on a car, or why the buckle burned their arm on a hot summer day. They don’t understand why they get a shot at the doctor, they don’t understand why the stove is hot, they don’t understand any of this crap until they get older and are exposed. The problem is that in order to avoid these situations, the only viable solution is to ask every parent to live in a lockdown-lite mode for 3 to 4 years every single time they have a kid. Is that reasonable?
Parents have lives and families and obligations. Kids are along for the ride until they can exert their own autonomy. That’s how it has always been and that’s how it will continue to be.
> Parents have lives and families and obligations. Kids are along for the ride until they can exert their own autonomy. That’s how it has always been and that’s how it will continue to be.
It's giving: "people want to have kids but also still want to do all that fun stuff they did but now with a kid because whatever, the kid will deal with it".
Alternatively, keeping kids locked up at home for the first 3-4 years limits their exposure to a variety of situations that help their brains and bodies develop. Then the next generation has a terrible immune system, no social skills, and are underdeveloped mentally.
In fairness, I _do_ agree that there are some things that need to be given up as a parent of young kids... Don't take your kids to a fine restaurant. But at the same time, I don't think children should be excluded from 95% of things because it inconveniences someone else. If it were about preventing people from inconveniencing others, then I think there's a strong argument that it's more than just kids that shouldn't be allowed to do the "fun stuff".
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.
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?
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.
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.
What parent in their right mind is bothering to bring a baby carrier and can’t manage to secure it?
I can't imagine that percentage goes up when strapped for time and under pressure during aircraft boarding.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/national-car-seat-check...
> What parent in their right mind
As a parent, you would be extremely saddened to learn that many are not.
My guy a car seat will do nothing in a crash.
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.
you'll be dead so it won't matter much.
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.
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)
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.
(Sorry, meant to reply to parent)
Scenarios without evacuations are ones where nearly everyone or everyone is already dead. That’s not a case to optimize for.
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
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.)
In Europe (and the US Northeast Corridor), I do favor trains to avoid going to and dealing with airports, but they're no panacea either. And I say this as someone with the various passes that make flying easier.
Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.
There's at least some element of Chesterton's fence that could come into play here.
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...
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.
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.
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!
If the adult is pitched forward with the child strapped to their chest (facing inward) then they risk bending the child’s spine backwards.
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.
here's the /s for those of you who are tonedeaf.
We have child-free hotels, child-free restaurantes, maybe now child-free airplanes...what's next, child-free cities?
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.
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
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.
But that’s it: we don’t do other flights with the kids
“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.
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?
You will not be worried about the baby in it's mother's arms if you crash land on a plane. In reality you don't want to be inconvenience. That's what happens when you live in a society full of different people though. Sometimes you have to wait as they load people in wheelchairs in planes. Sometimes a baby cries.
and if you want my personal opinion, anyone who feels crying babies are disruptive is an asshole. i am not saying that lightly. parents are not just flying for fun and letting their babies cry to torture you.
as a society we need to be more child friendly and supportive of parents. especially when they have a baby in distress. this whole idea that children should always be quiet and never bother adults is absurd, and only really found in western culture. that doesn't mean kids should be allowed to get away with anything, but a crying baby is not something that can just be stopped until the parents can identify the cause, and we should have some tolerance for that.
Parents have lives and families and obligations. Kids are along for the ride until they can exert their own autonomy. That’s how it has always been and that’s how it will continue to be.
It's giving: "people want to have kids but also still want to do all that fun stuff they did but now with a kid because whatever, the kid will deal with it".
In fairness, I _do_ agree that there are some things that need to be given up as a parent of young kids... Don't take your kids to a fine restaurant. But at the same time, I don't think children should be excluded from 95% of things because it inconveniences someone else. If it were about preventing people from inconveniencing others, then I think there's a strong argument that it's more than just kids that shouldn't be allowed to do the "fun stuff".
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.
> 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.
Vast majority of accidents happen on regular driven known routes not road trips.
I would expect far better from the FAA.
It is possible for this to be true while also simultaneously it being true that road trips are more at risk of accidents than regular routes.
I always heard people say most crashes happen close to home and I never thought twice about what they were actually saying.
Then one day it hit me: most people don't regularly drive far from home, so of course of accidents happen close to home.