One thing to add: Go down to the hardware store and buy a cheap bag of foam earplugs. When you board the plane, pass them around to all of the people around you, “I don’t know if the kid will cry, and we will do the best we can, but take these to help just in case.”
For a couple of bucks, you will be cut a TON of slack by those seated around you.
You apparently do not fly frequently. Holding an infant (under the age of 2) in your lap unrestrained other than by the parent, has been the standard for the last 50 years.
… or maybe pass out vuvuzelas?
And learn how to fly, sans parachute, as the crew chucks you out at altitude…
I would get your seats aisle and window in the same row and tehn not purchase a ticket for the baby. This will mean that the person between you can/and usually will sit anywhere else as there really isn’t a worse seat. Make sure to get on the plane early and have your child sit/climb in the middle while waiting for the seat holder to show up. Be feeding the kid too- crackers and juice on the middle seat’s tray table. The slobberier the better!
Now the real key here is to have the man (you?) with your computer out and big-ass headphones on watching Transformers in the aisle seat. Now you have to show that you are the parent of the kid and traveling with them, but you need to just come across like you don’t care- don’t bother turning down the volume or taking off your headphones when speaking for instance. And then say things like, “sucks to be you” when the person shows up to take the middle seat.
If this doesn’t save you the $200 for the safety of your child, nothing will.
The FAA is incredibly reactive rather than proactive when it comes to safety.
[sarcasm]Unfortunately, what we are going to need is a fatal crash involving an A380 filled to it’s maximum capacity of 853 passengers plus a lap-child per passenger, and definitive proof that every single child died because they were flung loose (the further outside the plane, the better) during the crash, as well as having a few babies kill the other passengers due to their being 20-lb weights smashing into their heads… then the FAA might say “hmm, maybe we ought to strap those things down? Let’s put out a study proposal and spend the next 15 years meeting once a year with “experts” before forgetting all about this”, at which point another A380 will need to crash…
And the NTSB gets to go “I told you so!” but no one will listen.[/sarcasm]
Like most things in life, it’s perfectly safe as long as nothing goes wrong.
I will also highly recommend the Travelmate. We use it when we don’t need to bring a stroller along, which is often, since we tend to be visiting family who come equipped with strollers. I don’t think I’ve ever walked through an airport when someone hasn’t asked me about it or commented on it.
I have often used the “don’t buy a seat and hope there’s a spare one that no one will want to sit in” tactic. It has worked much of the time. Usually, I ask at the gate (NOT at the ticket counter) if there’s a spare seat, and if it will be possible for me to bring my car seat on board. The gate agents are usually helpful.
Of course, this can backfire. Most recently, we flew on Spirit. If you want to choose your seats in advance, you have to buy them. Otherwise, they apparently just assign one to you – or at least they do this when they know you are traveling with a “lap baby”. We were assigned the window and middle seats in row 6 and the middle of row 7. My four year old and husband sat in six and I sat in 7. (Understandably, the older gentleman in the aisle of row 6 didn’t wish to sit in the middle of 7. He even had an excellent reason, having something to do with bladder issues.) We passed the baby back and forth over my husband’s head. Good times.
I fly about 3800 miles a month. It may have been standard in the states but it’s not here.
If we increase the cost of flying for a family of three (two parents and a kid under two) by 50%, how many trips will occur by private automobile rather than commercial aviation and how many additional fatalities will this add?
Flying by commercial air is pretty safe, and honestly, if someone made me an offer for a 33% discount on airfare in exchange for not having a seatbelt during flights, I’d probably take it, and I’d still come out ahead from a safety perspective by flying between Pittsburgh and Philly rather than driving.
Sure, but if there was a simple restraint for your child available to the airlines called a supplementary loop belt and they didn’t provide one and the FAA didn’t require one, even though other aviation authorities, including the JAA (Europe), CASA (Australia, and CAA (NZ), did require it what would you think then? You still get to put your baby on your lap and save the cost of a ticket but they are restrained by a seat belt. What if YOU were given a free ticket but you had to stand in the isle unrestrained?