:shrug
As i said above: it’s known that it would be safer if every child on a flight had its own seat with a suitable restraint. And also, it’s known that that would increase the cost of flying. And increasing the cost of flying increases the odds that families will drive, instead. And driving is much riskier than bringing unrestrained infants or badly restrained toddlers on airplanes.
Now, maybe the cost of toddler restraints would be spread across all passengers, and not charged to families with toddlers. That would mitigate the disincentives to fly. But when you look at marginal benefits you also need to look at marginal costs. The number of (toddlers sucked out of broken windows because their seatbelt didn’t hold them in place) plus (the number of toddlers hurt during major turbulence events because they slipped out of their seats) plus (the number of toddlers injured in crashes who could have gotten out safely if they’d had better harnesses) adds up to insignificant.
The number of toddlers who intentionally wiggle out of their seatbelt and prevent planes from taking off is also insignificant. This is the only case I’ve ever heard of.
I reckon that the cost of re-usable harnesses likely adds up to an (even more) insignificant number.
But also, this sounds like some real Pinto logic here. Which boils down to, yes our car is liable to explode in a low-speed rear-end collision, but since we have lobbied the government to treat human life as a (very) cheap commodity, reducible to the wages an average “unit” would earn in their lifetime and nothing more, the math actually works out that it would be irresponsible of us to design cars that don’t explode.
If the alternative to a more expensive Pinto was an even more deadly method of transportation you would have a point.
Car travel in freaking dangerous, and is the number one cause of death for children in the US.
It does seem like a flight-approved toddler safety harness could be something the airline has available, maybe if you book a flight with a toddler age kid having an option to add it to the booking, at a small extra cost if that’s needed. Keeping a few available at the terminal for when parents get there and realise that nope, this is not going to be a good day, wouldn’t be a big deal either, even if having some on every plane is more headache than it’s worth.
It would be easier than bringing a car seat (though obviously parents might want that at the destination), and it’s not all about risk to life, there’s also not wanting a kid to wriggle off and start causing chaos in the plane when parents are asleep on long haul flights.
Or there’s always this option, of course.
How much more expensive do you think plane tickets are going to be if an airline has, say, 5 or 10 harnesses per plane, distributed to the gate based on how many passengers below a certain age are ticketed for a given flight, and those harnesses last several years?
I think you are seeing the up front cost and presuming a high replacement volume that is just not likely to be there.
Suppose a harness costs 10 times as much as a typical seatbelt… what portion of your ticket cost do you suppose is represented by the cost of your seatbelt, as opposed to, say, crew wages, maintenance and wages for maintenance personnel, airport fees, and fuel and other consumables?
And while I’m at it:
Fair. But consider also, when we think in terms of general safety and not simply preventing this one perhaps fringe scenario… How many times do you suppose a child wriggles out of their seatbelt in mid-flight, perhaps even during take-off or landing, and nobody does anything because… the airplane is already in flight?
ETA: Honestly, I would not be shocked to learn that the cost of harnesses (which can be expected to survive many flights) would add up to less than the cost napkins. In fact, I think I’d even be shocked to learn the cost of harnesses per flight is more than the cost of napkins. We may well be putting the safety of children at risk for less than the cost of those flimsy little airplane napkins. Perhaps even less than the marginal cost of toilet paper.
Actually, it’s firearms. Sure, car travel is more dangerous than air travel, but that’s only because you’re likely to be in a car, and it’s more likely to be under the control of a non-professional. But gun deaths surpassed car crashes in 2020 and have remained on top since.
Yikes. Okay, I’m out of date. And tempted to rant about guns. Car travel is still incredibly more dangerous than commercial air travel.
Most of the time a kid is unbuckled during flight is not especially dangerous. I get up and walk a little in the aisle. (Sitting for lot stretches is dangerous, after all.) Kids need to move more than adults, maybe not for their physical health, but certainly for their mental health. I let my kids unbuckle when the seatbelt sign is off.
I think you are mentally equating buckling up on an airplane to buckling up in a car, and it’s orders is magnitude different.
When the parents aren’t trying to resolve the situation by either A) getting the child to stop the behavior that’s unreasonably inconveniencing others, or B) removing the child from the presence of the people they won’t stop unreasonably inconveniencing.
There you go, question answered. It’s not about how “outrageous” the child’s behavior is or isn’t. It’s about whether or not the parents are showing respect for the rights of others by trying to address and restrain the outrageous behavior. Not all parents are going to immediately succeed at that every time, but that doesn’t justify labeling them or their child “inexcusable”.
Have you tried beating the child, or obstructing its airway?
No, I am simply noting that there are other times, apart from during the pre-takeoff safety check, when children should be buckled in, but which won’t be reported on because the “failure scenario” where a kid insists on being unbuckled even with the seatbelt sign on in-flight are less likely to result in substantial interruptions to the flight.
You’re basically committing a kind of survivorship bias. Like trying to assess what parts of a bomber should be reinforced or given redundancy based on where the bullet holes are on planes coming back from missions. You’re reading about the rare story where a child who poses a danger to themselves in flight is successfully deplaned and the danger eliminated and deciding that the (very very) marginal costs of a better seatbelt for children aren’t worth it, while ignoring all the times when it isn’t reported on because the child goes nearly the entire flight with added danger both for their own failure to comply with safety instructions and because their seatbelt is not designed to keep them safe even if they are fully compliant. Or, more to the point, how many more children might suffer injuries in routine flight or during emergencies because they don’t have a seatbelt designed to keep them safe.
And, again, I would be shocked if the cost of harnesses per-flight would be more than the cost of napkins and possibly even toilet paper. I’m seeing that these kinds of harnesses are commercially available (with markup and all kinds of I am sure unnecessary pretty colors) for well under $100. I bet if airlines were to commission bare bones, FAA-compliant and functional child safety harness, they could come up with a contract to have them made for a good bit less.
But say each harness does cost $100. How much do you really think that would cost per-flight? Even if the cost is borne solely by families with children (which I don’t think it should be, but just supposing) it seems clear to me that it would come down to pennies per flight.
Short and sweet and exactly right.
It’s not a parallel at all. @Skywatcher 's link had a quote from a passenger that the child was scared, not disruptive.
Your church kid, Aaron, sounds as bad as Judy Blume’s fictional Super Fudge character. I wouldn’t use them as an archetype of a toddler.
If an adult has a panic attack on the runway, they try to calm them and if it doesn’t work, the pilot heads back to a gate.
Should airlines be required to have special adult harnesses to force these adults to fly?
I think most of the cost would be logistics, not the actual belt. Handing them out during the flight to parents of toddlers would add time to boarding. Handing them out at the gate, when they are also checking ID and stuff would likely be cheaper. A certain number would be lost when parents neglected to return them. (Parents of small children are often distracted during boarding and deplaning. We recently found a nice set of earphones on a plane. An hour later, the parent who had absentmindedly left it on our seats while dealing with his kids asked us if we had it.)
Would it be feasible? Maybe. I certainly haven’t run the numbers. If they ever decide to do that, i truly hope they will spread the cost to all passengers, and not ask parents of small children to pay extra. Because even if it’s a little extra it will likely result in a net increase in injuries to children.
Parents with small children are already invited to pre-board. So I’d say this is a solvable problem, but the problem is already solved.
And parents forgetting to return the harness? Seems to me (1) the parents would be most likely to just leave the harness in the seat and (2) that actually would be the preferred option, as it would then allow cabin crew to take mere seconds to remove and stow them either in the plane or at the gate.
Again, I really think you are overestimating (by orders of magnitude) the marginal cost of making these harnesses available or even requiring them for children of a certain age. For my part, it seems not only feasible, but eminently practical to the point of negligence that airlines have thus far failed to introduce such a harness.
Also, if you are worried about your kid’s safety, you can already buy a harness and bring it yourself. I don’t think airplanes, as is, are risky enough to bother. But you can solve that problem for your kid.
I think that very well could exceed the cost-benefit of a harness, for all but the most fringe group of very frequent travelers-with-children. This also seems like the worst option for someone who is concerned about pushing families back into less safe cars.
Bare minimum, airlines ought to at least be expected to offer people with children who are traveling the option to rent a harness from the airline at (the marginal, per-flight) cost. Every time someone books a ticket for a child beneath a certain age, put an alert on the booking site telling them that airplane seats may not be safe for children and offering that a harness designed to keep children safe and reduce the risk of safety-of-flight disruptions is available for a (very) nominal fee of perhaps a few cents or at most a couple dollars.
That way, people who will only fly once or twice with a child before the child grows out of their harness (and either no longer needs the harness, or needs a bigger one) won’t have to spend what amounts to an extra $50 to $100 per child per flight (and risk losing the harness between flights, whether while traveling or at home between trips).
Homer: And sometimes the kids are in the back seat, they’re hollering, they’re making you nuts. There’s gotta be something you can do about that.
Engineer #1: Maybe a built-in video game would keep them entertained?
Homer: You’re fired! What is my brother paying you for?
Engineer #2: What about a separate soundproof bubble-dome for the kids? With optional restraints and muzzles?
Homer: Bullseye!
Well we could just drug the children (the children themselves might actually prefer that—heck, I might even prefer being drugged), but alas, I fear the potential adverse side effects would be much greater. Oh, and then you’d need ejection seats to extricate unconscious passengers even just on the ground, and a fuselage designed to accommodate ejection seats (although, as an added bonus, possibly for an additional fee, you could equip the ejection seats with parachutes, too!).
That’s the outcome i don’t want. People are irrationally scared of plane flights, and that would certainly turn some family flights into road trips. I want it either free and invisible (after you book the flight, when you are already there, they hand you a harness and instructions) or i don’t want it at all.