Taking car seat and pram on plane

[Mum3202]

We are going on our first holiday as a family of 3 and we will be taking our infant car seat and pram. We will be handing both over before boarding at the door as we will be using it until then (is a travel system so car seat fits on pram). Both will be then taken to hold and returned when we land (hopefully!).
I was wondering if it’s worth to buy 2 travel bags (1 for car seat and 1 for pram) just to avoid/prevent scratches, dirt, etc.
It was quite an expensive travel system and I’m worried that it’s going to get damaged.
Anyone else has given pram/pushchair/car seat before boarding at the door and has any suggestions or can share their experience?
If you used travel bags for your prams/car seat do you recommend any particular ones?
I’ve been looking at Amazon and they seem quite basic, just nylon bags with no padding, but nearly £50 for 2 bags!

Will your pram fit?

Sorry, just edited original post. After handing it over at the door these will be taken to hold and returned when we land.
It’s not one of those cabin size prams so sadly can’t take it on the plane with my hand luggage.

I don’t think I would bother about putting them in bags, it would take time and there’s no guarantee that it will stop any damage being done. I’ve taken pushchairs, they were fine, but I did take a cheap one. They go in hold last and come off plane first.

Mine are bigger now so maybe someone with more recent exp can correct me, but it used to be that pushchair had to be in one piece fully foldable to be handed over at the gate. Anything bulky - car seats, bassinet tops, separate seat - had to be checked in as hood luggage (u got 2 of these free they were labelled and went into the bulky items checkin).

I’m not sure how old your child is but we bought a silver cross travel stroller for holidays that we weren’t precious about. I wouldn’t put my expensive pram in the hold. Got it in great condition on marketplace.

In all honesty, I'd buy a cheap second-hand but still decent quality pram just for the trip. It's highly likely that the pram will suffer some rough handling - they just do.
You'd be able to sell it on for a similar amount to what you paid afterwards so shouldn't cost much in real terms.

I would probably buy a cheaper & smaller pram for air travel in case it gets damaged or stolen.

Get a car seat bag for the car seat and a cheap pram on FB marketplace - not worth the risk to your nice pram!

Yes I would buy bags for them to avoid damage. We are going to be doing the same in the summer...we have to take our big pram as the bassinet part will be what the baby sleeps in at the other end. If you can afford to buy a cheap pram instead then it's worth considering though.

One other thing I'm a bit worried about is potential damage to the car seat on the plane. I know how rough the airport people can be and flinging a car seat around would potentially compromise the safety of the seat. Not quite sure how to deal with that one though.

If you can afford to buy a decent but cheap pram for travel do it. That's what we've done in the past and means you're not worried about it getting a bit scratched/thrown around.

We put DS' car seat in a bag along with a giant cuddly toy strapped into it and a blanket wrapped around it for a little protection. However that's a HBB and the travel bag has backpack type straps so it helped carry it through the airport. I'm your situation i'd be less likely to as you won't be able to put them in the bags on the tarmac, so from the gate you'll have baby, hand luggage and two travel bags which will be unwieldy

I had a cheap pram for this purpose. Somebody took it (mistakenly) at baggage reclaim. We took theirs and tried to track them down to swap but it never happened. We were left with with a newer version of the same thing. So I def wouldn’t risk an expensive travel system.

I don’t think you can take a car seat to the plane it has to be checked in. Again we got a 2nd one for this purpose as didn’t want to check in their “main” seat

We used the bag and it came back scuffed but the pram was the same condition. Had to check the car seat with suitcases and pram at gate

Sorry I don't know if that makes sense. The pram was in the same condition when we got it back. We wrapped the towels round the car seat and secures with luggage straps then in the bag and it was also perfect.

Also the bag was really dirty so I was glad the pram was covered to protect it for the most part

I would put them in bags.
I got a spare pram for our first US holiday with DS... it was flipping disgusting when it got off the plane.
I was not impressed at all.

Just got for amazon's cheapest.

If you ever need a travel pushchair, the mamas and papas airo is small enough to go on most planes and has a travel bag too.

Like others I would suggest buying a cheap second hand buggy and putting it in a nylon bag to try to prevent cosmetic damage.

Also you hand it over at the gate, or at the bottom of the steps as you board, but you don't often get it back there at the other end. It will most likely arrive via a separate 'oversized' baggage belt, usually before your main luggage, so be prepared to carry your baby into the terminal.

I don't know your financial circumstances, but if you can pick up a second hand babyzen yoyo, or a cybex eezy twist, they fold down small enough to take as cabin luggage. I would rather do that that risk damage to the main pram.

We travel quite frequently and I echo everyone else that says buy a second hand pram for the hold you don't care so much about or go for one for the overhead locker - we have one that's been a godsend in visa queues.

For the car seat, we got a car seat bag from Amazon that says something like "car seat - fragile" on the outside in the hope it might possibly be treated more delicately. We also chuck some nappies in to pad it a bit. Sometimes it comes out with outsized baggage and sometimes on the conveyor belt. It's been ok so far, visibly at least.

Sorry to jump on someone else's thread but we will have a two month old for our holiday and will therefore need a bassinet rather than a yo-yo type pram (which is what we had for our older two but it's now given up the ghost). We want something the baby can sleep in whilst there as I know from experience that travel cots are generally far too massive and low down for small babies. Any suggestions?

buy a travel pushchair that you can take on as hand luggage and check the car seat in in a bag ( I recommend this one https://www.genesistravelbags.co.uk/products/genesis-car-seat-travel-bags and then you could also put nappies inside it too):

both the bugaboo butterfly and Joolz are are great travel puschairs that I have taken as hand luggage and you can get adapters for both to put the car seat on it if you want to. The butterfly is suitable from 6 months but the aer from birth.

Don’t risk taking an expensive pram. There’s a good chance it could get damaged. Same for the car seat.

Thank you all. Forgot to say DD is 5 months old. Not yet using the seat on the pushchair, even though she could on the lowest recline level and we’ve tried but she doesn’t seem happy with that. She never liked the carrycot too, so she usually goes out in her infant car seat, which she loves, but only for about 2 hours for safety reasons and the rest of the time she is on the sling/baby carrier.
I’ve looked into cabin size pushchairs but it seems that most are forward facing. Any recommendations for parent facing ones?
We are travelling next week so could just pick up a cabin size pushchair to take with us on the plane but I’m worried she won’t get used to
it and then the car seat won’t fit in that pushchair and we would have to carry her on the sling for 2 weeks!
Really don’t know what to do!

It's only 2 weeks. I'd buy the cheapest fold up buggy you can find and don't worry about the rest.

Never took the proper travel system away; if you saw how they handle them, you wouldn’t.

Lightweight holiday buggy all the way, as PP have said.

Have never taken car seat either.