# Babies and airplane turbulence **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 25, 2013, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833 "2013-06-25T00:47:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![SmellMyWort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SmellMyWort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmellMyWort)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/21 "2013-06-26T20:00:10Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > My guess: > A baby seat strapped into the middle seat of a 3-across will impede the exit of the passendger in an emergency. > A baby in an emergency evacuation in a baby seat would slow mother and child exiting. > It would reuire fiddling with straps to either get the baby seat out (and lug down the narrow aisle) or get the baby out. > > Simpler to be carrying a the baby free and clear to begin with should an emergency develop. I’m pretty sure you can only put the carseat in the window seat. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/22 "2013-06-27T02:10:08Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Simpler to be carrying a the baby free and clear to begin with should an emergency develop. Which incidentally was the argument which used to be made against seatbelts, that it could be better to not be belted in, and a person would be thrown free and clear from the vehicle. :eek: FWIW, we’ve flown with our kids when they were babies. They can clear their ears by drinking and this is one of the recommended methods for take off and landings. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/23 "2013-06-27T07:28:29Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > a human brain/head can take quite a bit of linear acceleration, provided the load is distributed fairly evenly. If you’re in your car and get hit from behind, as long as that headrest is properly positioned, you can take a pretty hard hit without suffering brain injury. This is the kind of acceleration you produce when you _bounce_ a baby with its head well-supported. you accelerate the skull in a linear fashion, the skull pushes against the brain with a nice, evenly distributed force, and that force gets distributed throughout the brain as a nice, even hydrostatic load, no major distortion of brain tissue (provided the accelerations do not reach ridiculous magnitude). > > But rotational accelerations are more troublesome. Shake a baby by holding its chest, and the baby’s head nods back and forth violently. Imagine an axis running from one ear to the other: the baby’s head rotates back and forth around this axis. When you rotate the skull, there are precious few attachment points where torque can be transferred from the skull to the brain. Those attachments are things like the brain stem and major blood vessels, and they get stretched injuriously. Torque gets transferred across the brain by shear stress, which distorts and stretches the brain tissue (see [diffuse axonal injury](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_axonal_injury)). If you’re in a car and get hit from the side, your brain experiences something similar to this (except the axis of rotation runs from your nose to the back of your head): the car accelerates sideways and takes your body with it, your neck pulls the bottom of your head sideways, and your head rotates violently. You can suffer a traumatic brain injury this way without your head ever hitting anything - just like a shaken baby. Isn’t the damage from shaking babies also due to the frequency? If you shake them at “resonant frequency”, it’ll put more stress on their neck and brain. Turbulence can’t reach such high frequencies. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/24 "2013-06-27T08:44:13Z")
There seems to be a slight disconnect here. It seems that on domestic flights in the US babies are expected to be on your lap with _no restraint_, however on international flights and on domestic flights in Australia and presumably other countries, babies are expected to be on your laps _and restrained by a seat belt extension_. Some of you are expressing disbelief at others having the baby on their laps but are missing the point that these babies are _restrained_ by a seatbelt extension. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/25 "2013-06-27T10:50:29Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > Isn’t the damage from shaking babies also due to the frequency? If you shake them at “resonant frequency”, it’ll put more stress on their neck and brain. Turbulence can’t reach such high frequencies. No, but it can make the kid hit the ceiling. A few years ago, there were several people wounded (broken bones) from a bad landing of an Iberia flight, I think in Bolivia; the wounded passengers had not been wearing seatbelts and some of them had been sort of hopping up and down from their seated position, as if looking over the other passenger’s heads was going to show them what was in front of the plane. The video from inside the plane was quite spectacular: the complaints ceased as soon as it was released. I’ve searched for it and can’t find it, though. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/26 "2013-06-27T11:39:48Z")
But that produces injuries different from shaking. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/27 "2013-06-27T13:26:12Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > There seems to be a slight disconnect here. It seems that on domestic flights in the US babies are expected to be on your lap with _no restraint_, however on international flights and on domestic flights in Australia and presumably other countries, babies are expected to be on your laps _and restrained by a seat belt extension_. Some of you are expressing disbelief at others having the baby on their laps but are missing the point that these babies are _restrained_ by a seatbelt extension. Yes, you may be right. I mean, she may have had the baby in the extension too and I may have missed it. On a slightly different note, on the way back I rode in a short hop from Newark to Albany. There was a baby and you could visibly see some people’s groans…and this baby smiled every second of the way back, laughed, cooed, and was just utterly adorable. I was waving at her from my seat a few seats back. On the way out, we had a crying baby. Why do some babies cry and some don’t mind? ---
**Author:** ![SmellMyWort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SmellMyWort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmellMyWort)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/28 "2013-06-27T15:55:34Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > There seems to be a slight disconnect here. It seems that on domestic flights in the US babies are expected to be on your lap with _no restraint_, however on international flights and on domestic flights in Australia and presumably other countries, babies are expected to be on your laps _and restrained by a seat belt extension_. Some of you are expressing disbelief at others having the baby on their laps but are missing the point that these babies are _restrained_ by a seatbelt extension. It’s because different countries’ airlines have different regulations. US and Canadian based airlines do not allow babies to be restrained using a belt extension. This is because of research showing that babies restrained in this manner are no less likely to be injured (squished between the holding adult and the belt) in a “sudden deceleratation” type accident. EU airlines require them to prevent babies from flying around and injuring other passengers. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/29 "2013-06-28T02:25:05Z")
> [@SmellMyWort](#): > > It’s because different countries’ airlines have different regulations. US and Canadian based airlines do not allow babies to be restrained using a belt extension. This is because of research showing that babies restrained in this manner are no less likely to be injured (squished between the holding adult and the belt) in a “sudden deceleratation” type accident. EU airlines require them to prevent babies from flying around and injuring other passengers. I’m talking about specific quotes in this thread where one poster says they had a baby on their lap with a seatbelt and another poster misses the fact that the baby had a seatbelt. (RickG responding to njtt.) I don’t see how the baby can be squished between the adult and the belt, the baby has their own belt that attaches to the adult’s belt, it is not just one belt holding them both. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833/30 "2013-06-28T07:22:26Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > But that produces injuries different from shaking. Still can kill a baby. I would say that falls under “harm to the baby”. From the OP, underline mine: > [@EmilyG](#): > > if you have a young baby on an airplane, and there’s really bad turbulence, could that result in shaken baby syndrome or other harm to the baby? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-and-airplane-turbulence/661833.md?page=1)