Baby Boss on Board: Buckle Up!

Why you’ll have to pay for your Toddler’s seat on Planes

Airlines are reviewing their safety precautions upwards that will see parents pay for the seats of their children who are younger than two years old. This comes as a revision of the previous law that saw parents hold their babies on their laps during a flight.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA which is the world’s largest labour union organized by flight attendants for flight attendants raised the issue at an airline safety summit held by the FAA earlier in March 2023.

The Union stated that the current provision that allows parents to hold their child in their arms, referred to as flying with a lap child, is not sufficient to ensure their safety in cases of severe turbulence. In December, a Hawaiian Airlines flight injured 36 people, including a 14-month-old and another previous incident in 1989 which was a crash-landing in Iowa in which three infants were injured and one was killed.

The Associations of Flight Attendants and the National Transportation Safety Board in a statement highlighted that it’s impossible for any parent to hold onto their child in severe turbulence. They want infants to have their own seats and, if necessary, be placed in an approved car seat.

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The Association of Flight Attendants has been pushing for this amendment to flying for the past 30 years. They state that the only way to guarantee the safety of all passengers on board is by having everyone in their own seat which is secured with a safety belt in times of turbulence.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s guidelines for flying with children state that the safest place for your child under the age of two on a U.S. airplane is in an approved child restraint system (CRS) or device, not in your lap. But that’s exactly how thousands of young children fly with their parents every year.

In 2021, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a couple of recommendations to airlines to prevent turbulence-related injuries. It had 25 safety recommendations and four that were re-iterated included, weather reports, increased sharing of turbulence events, the need for flight attendants to be seated with their seatbelts buckled during certain phases of flight, and the need for parents to secure children under 2 in their own seat with a Federal Aviation Administration-approved child restraint system.

Parents have been cautioned to get the correct manufacturer’s label when acquiring these seats. The seat should be marked as approved by the US government and states for use in both cars and airplanes. The parents will then go ahead and install the seats while on board a plane. The process will be seamless as many US airlines allow families with young children to board early in order to give parents extra time to get settled with the car seats, and flight attendants can no doubt help with the installation process.

The next step of action on this issue is to push for the new regulations when a representative of the Association of Flight Attendants is set to testify to Congress on lap babies and other safety air travel safety issues. The hearing, which is with the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will be held on Thursday, March 23, 2023.