To thnk that airlines should not allow lap babies on flights?

Realistically if the plane crashes youre likely all to die anyway - no seat belt in the world can stop that.

How do you expect people to travel if they have babies?!? To visit family for example? As PP said, all European airlines provide a special seat belt loop to keep the baby safe on take off and landing. On long haul flights bulkhead seats have baby bassinets that can be used until about 8 or 9 months, but you are required to have the baby on your lap for take off and landing and if there is any turbulence anyway.

Airlines don’t require you to buy a seat for a child until age 2, but after age 1 we always bought a seat anyway so that our child had space to sit, but that’s only viable once the baby can comfortably sit alone unaided for a full flight.

The nice thing to do in your situation would have been to offer to swap seats with the dad. Then the parents would have been together, with an aisle seat, and you would have been sat far away from the baby. Of course you’d don’t have to do that - “why should I give up the seat I want that I paid for etc?” To which my answer would be you don’t have to, but sometimes it’s nice to just do a nice thing for other people, and generally cosmic karma rewards you.

You cannot compare a car with an airoplane. It feels strange, but cars and planes are very different. Car crashes happen often and involve sudden, violent stops, and cars also have airbags that can seriously injure a baby held on a lap. That’s why a baby must always be in their own car seat in a car.
On a plane, serious crashes are extremely rare. The seat belt is mainly for turbulence, not high-speed crashes, and planes don’t have airbags. Aviation rules are based on overall risk across millions of flights.

That’s standard for babies in all airlines. How else do you think they travel? Sat on their own seat wobbling around.

Me neither. Never. Can't stand the goddamn entitlement. 'ooooh, I have a baaabyyy, it's sooo diiiificult for me, mooove' - like I give a single fuck about you and your brat? Want to sit somewhere specific: book it and pay for it. Don't want to pay - suck it up. You and your baby are not important, not 'speshul', and no one cares about you, except yourself.

I would go out of my way to NOT give them the seat.

Flew last week, and there was a couple, who sat separately, a few seats from each other. As soon as they sat down, they started harassing people around them to swap, so the dude could sit with his gf. No one did. The couple weren't best pleased, but had to suck it up. I don't see why some baby should be an exception.

The safest option is to use a car seat.

Currently thinking by travellers is that paying for seats trumps everything!

Why wouldn’t it?

I never said at any time that I thought babies shouldn’t travel. I asked whether it is safe to have them on laps. On the flight I was on yesterday they were all on their parents’ laps with the attachable belts some of you were talking about.

when I came out here on a BA flight, there was a family who had been separated. The cabin crew were trying to negotiate with passengers to move, but everyone refused because they had paid for their seats.

The father started to get angry and rude, and security was called. He was told to calm down and sit down, or he’d be offloaded!

To be fair they’d booked last minute due to a family bereavement, so they probably couldn’t purchase the seats they wanted. But be warned! Currently thinking by travellers is that paying for seats trumps everything!

It sounds like she wanted her partner to sit in your seat and you to move.

I never said at any time that I thought babies shouldn’t travel. I asked whether it is safe to have them on laps. On the flight I was on yesterday they were all on their parents’ laps with the attachable belts some of you were talking about.

when I came out here on a BA flight, there was a family who had been separated. The cabin crew were trying to negotiate with passengers to move, but everyone refused because they had paid for their seats.

The father started to get angry and rude, and security was called. He was told to calm down and sit down, or he’d be offloaded!

To be fair they’d booked last minute due to a family bereavement, so they probably couldn’t purchase the seats they wanted. But be warned! Currently thinking by travellers is that paying for seats trumps everything!

How do you expect people to travel if they have babies?!? To visit family for example? As PP said, all European airlines provide a special seat belt loop to keep the baby safe on take off and landing. On long haul flights bulkhead seats have baby bassinets that can be used until about 8 or 9 months, but you are required to have the baby on your lap for take off and landing and if there is any turbulence anyway.

Airlines don’t require you to buy a seat for a child until age 2, but after age 1 we always bought a seat anyway so that our child had space to sit, but that’s only viable once the baby can comfortably sit alone unaided for a full flight.

The nice thing to do in your situation would have been to offer to swap seats with the dad. Then the parents would have been together, with an aisle seat, and you would have been sat far away from the baby. Of course you’d don’t have to do that - “why should I give up the seat I want that I paid for etc?” To which my answer would be you don’t have to, but sometimes it’s nice to just do a nice thing for other people, and generally cosmic karma rewards you.

The nice thing to do was for parent of the baby to actually pay for a seat like the op did and not expect other people to give up their seat that they have taken time to go online and book! I'm scared of flying so always book the isle seat as it's the one I prefer, I have been asked many a time to swap to window seat so a parent can sit with their child, it makes me mad, I have 3 kids and always paid extra to have them near me and would be mortified to expect someone else to give up their seat because they are so entitled they couldn't be bothered to do what the rest of us do and pay!

Lap babies?
Do you get them from the same shop as laptops and lapdogs?

Yep I get that but as you'll obviously know with your previous if there's a call to evacuate you can't start triaging by age, lining up women or children first or playing "no, no, after you"...

Ex airline myself. Obviously when adukts can help/ste. Needed at the bottom you send some first 🙄.

im not sacrificing kids lives so some selfish knob goblin can go ahead of them just because she wants to & thinks kids should be sacrificed

Sorry, but the problem is that as a policy is the potential for slowing the whole evacuation down and worse case increasing the total number of serious injuries or even loss of life..

FWIW if you are dealing with an emergency landing that might lead to an evac on landing the cabin crew might even select suitable adults to go out of the doors first to assist at the bottom of the slides.

im the opposite.

In case of emergency I want (other peoples) babies & children in the aisle seats & evacuated first.

i care more about them than myself or random adults 🙇🏻‍♀️

kids safe FIRST.

How do you expect people to travel if they have babies?!? To visit family for example? As PP said, all European airlines provide a special seat belt loop to keep the baby safe on take off and landing. On long haul flights bulkhead seats have baby bassinets that can be used until about 8 or 9 months, but you are required to have the baby on your lap for take off and landing and if there is any turbulence anyway.

Airlines don’t require you to buy a seat for a child until age 2, but after age 1 we always bought a seat anyway so that our child had space to sit, but that’s only viable once the baby can comfortably sit alone unaided for a full flight.

The nice thing to do in your situation would have been to offer to swap seats with the dad. Then the parents would have been together, with an aisle seat, and you would have been sat far away from the baby. Of course you’d don’t have to do that - “why should I give up the seat I want that I paid for etc?” To which my answer would be you don’t have to, but sometimes it’s nice to just do a nice thing for other people, and generally cosmic karma rewards you.

Parents with infants should seat in the window seat... If there's an emergency, you don't want them between you and your exit.