When flying with a baby or toddler, a bit of preparation can make all the difference! Avoid airport meltdowns with tips from our in-house safety expert, Sarah Tilton, on planning and preparing for your trip, navigating through the airport, transporting your car seat, and most importantly, traveling safely.Planning Your Trip: How your child should be seated on the planeChildren up to 40 poundsThe safest way for children up to 40 pounds to travel on a plane is in a harnessed car seat or child safety restraint system. While the FAA does permit children under the age of 2 to sit on your lap during a flight, they strongly recommend that children be secured in a car seat that is installed on an aircraft seat to protect from injury during take-off, periods of in-flight turbulence, and landing.For children over 40 pounds, sitting in their own seat and being secured with the aircraft lap belt is a safe and acceptable option. However, if you plan to bring along your child’s car seat so that you can use it when you reach your destination, you may want to consider securing your child in the seat on the aircraft rather than checking it as luggage.

This will protect the car seat from damage that might occur while being handled by the baggage crew or during the flight.Planning Your Trip: Purchasing TicketsIf the cost of purchasing a separate ticket for your child is a concern, you may want to consider choosing a flight during non-peak hours. Call the airline and ask if there are flights to your destination that tend to not be full. Tires For Sale In Indio CaAsk if there are any discounts for child seating on those flights. Prom Dress Stores Salisbury MdIf you can be flexible with your travel times, you can often get assistance from the airlines.Leftover Laminate Flooring For SaleBefore booking your tickets, you should also check with the airline for any guidelines or regulations they may have for traveling with young children, including minimum age, documentation requirements, and seating positions.

When booking your tickets, make sure you get seat assignments so your family is sitting together. Sometimes when you order your tickets well in advance of the travel date, seat assignments are not yet available online, so you may need to call the airline to speak with an agent.Be sure to book a window seat if your child will be secured in a car seat during the flight. Since car seats can be bulky, positioning them in a window seat will allow any other passengers seated in the row to be able to enter or exit the row freely. Car seats should also not be installed in any seating position in an exit row.Planning Your Trip:  Preparing for the flightIn order to secure your child in a car seat on an aircraft, the car seat must be FAA approved. Look for a label on the side of the seat that says “This child restraint system conforms to all applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards” and “This restraint is certified for use in motor vehicles and aircraft.” All Britax harnessed car seats, including infant car seats, convertible car seats, and combination harness-2-booster seats, are certified for use on aircraft.

Belt-positioning booster seats are NOT FAA approved and should not be used to secure your child on a plane. Belt-positioning booster seats require both a lap and shoulder belt to restrain your child and aircraft only have lap belts.To help prepare your child for the journey and minimize headaches and meltdowns along the way, try these tips:Before packing any carry-on bags, check the FAA and TSA websites for information on what you are allowed to bring on board with you. This is especially important if you’ll be traveling with breast milk, baby formula, or baby food.During Your Trip:  At the airportMaking your way through the airport with a child, luggage, and a car seat can be a challenge. Britax offers three solutions to make transporting your car seat more manageable:During Your Trip:  On the planeThe car seat should be installed in a window seat using the aircraft lap belt. Install the car seat in the direction you would install it in your vehicle – rear-facing for young children, and forward-facing for older children.

On some aircraft, it may be difficult to install a car seat rear-facing due to space, so consider booking seats in a bulkhead row for extra room.During take-off and landing, the change in altitude may cause ear pressure discomfort for children. Having your child eat, drink, or use a pacifier during take-off and landing will help relieve pressure.If you are flying while pregnant, consider wearing compression socks and performing leg stretches every hour to prevent uncomfortable swelling in the legs and ankles.Home  »  Airplane • News • Safety   »   Flying with a Car Seat? Flying with a Car Seat? On November 19, 2010 In Airplane, News, SafetyIf you’ve read either of our travel posts: Leaving on a Jet Plane or On the Road Again, traveled with your Littles, or even pondered traveling with your Littles, you might know that travelling with your Littles can be nerve-wracking.You might also know that there are about a million options and configurations of children, car seats, and travel.  

With this large range of options, the right one is the one that works best for you and your family.For my family, that’s meant travelling with a Britax convertible seat (at least on most of the trips we’ve taken since Littles expanded our family).  However.My youngest Little has outgrown her Boulevard by height and with a holiday trip to Grandma’s house on the horizon, I returned to stressing about which car seat is the right option for travel.Despite having access to the lightweight Graco Contender, I boldly decided to take our Britax Frontier 90.  At 25 lbs, the Frontier outweighs the Contender by a good 10 pounds.  And it’s a lot bulkier.  So what would possess me to bring the Frontier instead of a lighter weight seat with a smaller footprint?We’ve had nothing but good things to say about this installation system.  It takes almost all of the guesswork and grunting out of installing seats.  Plus, it allows for installs in seating positions that would require a great deal of sweat equity for almost every other seat.

When the Frontier 90, Pinnacle 90, and Pioneer 70 were released, they weren’t approved for FAA use.  Eventually, Britax received this approval for the seats and issued a retroactive statement allowing airplane use.However, my Frontier was made prior to that date and it did not come with the FAA sticker.Things to print if your seat falls into this category:If you’re better at planning than I am, call Britax for an updated sticker.  They’ll send one out to you.Note: it’s wise to make this call before 2 days prior to your flight.Our Gogo Kidz Travelmate has served us well over the years.  It’s fit on Britax convertible seats, a couple of Diono Radians, a Graco Size4Me, and once, on a First Years True Fit.  So I was pretty bummed to discover that it doesn’t *quite* fit on the Frontier the way it does on the convertibles.  After a bit of fiddling, I discovered that it fits on the lip just above the base.This means that I have to recline the seat a bit more as we’re strolling through the airport.  

The low profile of the Frontier means it’s not likely that my kiddo will be able to ride in the seat as we stroll through because her legs would be just a few inches off the ground.  She’s 5 now, and mostly cooperative about walking with us so this wasn’t a huge issue, though she was very fond of sitting down in it EVERY time I set the seat down.The Frontier is so large that there’s no way it will fit through the x-ray machine at the airport.  The TSA agent took it to be screened separately — we picked it up after we got through the x-ray machine ourselves.The bonus here is that it’s one less bulky item to manage as we move through the security process.This is definitely more challenging than getting a smaller, lighter weight seat onto the plane does. When we traveled with convertible seats, I found that carrying the seat over my head while urging my kiddos to find our seats was the most efficient means of travel.  But with such a heavy, bulky seat as the Frontier, this wasn’t an option.  

It’s just too heavy and bulky.  Instead, I did a kind of bear hug around the middle portion of seat, peeked over one side, and made my way to our seats.At least it was a short trip down the aisle.Once we were in our seats, the Frontier came off of the Travelmate and I stored the cart in the overhead bin.Getting Into the Airplane SeatInstalling the combination seats with ClickTight on the plane is a little different from most other seats.  In a car, the installation involves engaging the ClickTight panel, threading the seat belt through, then closing the panel to engage the ClickTight system.  On an airplane, the ClickTight panel stays closed and the lap belt goes over the panel instead.This does tend to leave the buckle right behind the child’s back.  Twisting the female end of the buckle stalk a few times can move the buckle away from that area.The Frontier sits low enough on the seat that my Little was able to put her tray table down on the airplane. This is a huge plus for us because she loves to arrange things on that tray while we fly.

On the minus side, the Frontier is slightly larger than many commercial airline seats.  The Frontier spilled over the edge of my daughter’s seat and into mine.  In the picture at the left, the separation of the seats isn’t visible at all because the Frontier is partially on my seat!  Also, my shoulder got to rest uncomfortably against the upper shell of the seat for our entire journey.Our second flight was on a smaller, regional jet.  On this flight, the seats were wider so the Frontier fit onto the airplane seat –I didn’t even have to put the armrest up!Once we land, it’s always a race to grab things from the overhead, put the Travelmate back onto the seat, put on my backpack, hoist the Frontier up , hugging it in front of me, then herd my Littles off the plane while trying to see around the bulky sides of the car seat without bumping into any other passengers.No matter how many times I’ve done this, it never sucks less.  At least the walk usually isn’t very long.  

Unless we’re at the very back of the aircraft — then we gain a little extra time to gather our items while the entire plane disembark before we do.After spending most of the day on the plane, we arrived at Grandma’s.  The big moment was here!  It was time to install the Frontier in the car.  Two seconds later, all of the hassle of traveling with such a heavy seat was worth it because the seat was installed properly and we were ready to go.I realize that this is a very short sentence that is not proportionate to the relief and awesomeness of installing the seat so quickly and easily.When I told the team at CSFTL that I was planning to take the Frontier on this trip, many of them looked at me like I was perhaps not thinking clearly.  But I recalled the struggles that I’ve had installing seats while the entire family waited in the heat or in the cold and I thought it was time to take a chance on a different solution.Taking a seat as heavy as the Frontier on an airplane trip wasn’t my first choice, only because of the size/weight of the seat.