Car seats and taxis or hire cars

[sausagechops2]

We're grandparents taking our 2 daughters, their partners and babies abroad. I'm not sure how you manage with no car seat when taking a taxi from the airport to your accommodation or hiring a car. I'm assuming car hire companies will have one you can hire. But taxis ....* *

Most airlines let you take a car seat in the hold for free. You can then strap the car seat into the taxi.

We've just done this for a trip and it worked really well.

How old are the kids? Baby setas are usually a doddle to take with you and install using a seat belt in either a taxi or hire car.

For older kids we take seats with us if we’re hiring a car (hire companies won’t guarantee availability) and if we’re not we’re usually staying in a hotel so will ask them to book us a transfer with car seats. It’s rare that general taxis at the airport will have car seats available.

I wish I had known about the trunki rucksack seat earlier because I would definitely have bought those.

Does the package not offer a bus? We did that until DS was about 3 then took an inflatable booster seat.

Thank you for your comments.
The children are 9 months and 18 months so both will need something. We've booked flights and accommodation independently so no package or provision.

We always take own car seats. They are free to add in hold on all airlines.
We bought ones that can be fitted easily with seatbelt only for travel as lighter and saves taking isofix bases.

For 9 and 18 month olds they probably both fit in baby car seats still that can be attached to pram for ease of moving around, so I would probably take those if they have.

We bought ones that can be fitted easily with seatbelt only for travel as lighter and saves taking isofix bases.

You can get some seats that are isofix without a separate base. But we do have always gone with ones that can be installed with either isofix or seatbelt.

It depends on the country. The EU directive that requires child seats doesn't apply to taxis, but it says that countries can add other requirements. In Spain for example a taxi must have a car seat but only if you are travelling outside a built-up area, which sounds like the result of a very long meeting.

I guess the idea is that if you are going from one town to another in a taxi with children you will probably book in advance, rather than flag the taxi down in the street or at a stand and wait while the driver calls his dispatcher to send three seats of the five possible sizes that the EU legislation describes.

At Palma airport in Majorca the taxis have access to a pool of child seats of all sizes, which works really well. But in some cases I suspect that there may be cases where you just aren't going to get the right seat. Any fines for this are up to the driver, and the chance of an accident where the right seat would make a difference happening on any individual journey are very tiny indeed, so you may have to accept that in practice, especially if you are in a one-taxi town and it's coming up to supper time.