# Best way to fly with car seat



## icy02 (Oct 28, 2008)

I am looking for any tips on flying with a (heavy) 1 yr old and a car seat. I heard that your not supposed to check the carseat with luggage. The luggage is really heavy and can damage the car seat?!? That means I am lugging a solid baby, a heavy car seat, and probably 2 carry on's. Did I mention I will be traveling myself and that I'm pregnant?







The only reason I am traveling is that my grandmother is very sick, and will possibly not make it much longer....

TIA


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## chickabiddy (Jan 30, 2004)

Best way, for both the child and the carseat, is to buy the child a seat on the plane and use the carseat on the plane.


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## treegardner (May 28, 2009)

We bought our son his own seat. We brought the car seat onto the plane and that's where he sat most of the time. When you check in maybe you could ask if there is someone that could help you carry everything.


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## lifeguard (May 12, 2008)

What is suggested is the "best" way but not always doable for everyone. Everytime I've travelled with ds I've checked his seat with no problems (let's face it - buying another seat can be VERY expensive & we don't all have the money for that luxury). We bought a large hockey bag with wheels & a solid bottom for it. It makes it easy to transport & offers some protection for it.

Life is not always ideal.


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## MamieCole (Jun 1, 2007)

My advice is:

~Wear your LO.
~Put the car seat on wheels. (There are luggage carts for 20 bucks at Target that work great, or specialized products like the Go Go Kidz Travelmate, which is way more expensive.)
~Only bring ONE carry on. Just a change of clothes, diapers/wipes, some toys and snacks for your LO. I tended to WAY overpack my carryons and have learned that only packing the basic necessities is the best way to go.
~Ideally you'd be able to purchase a seat for your LO and install the carseat on the plane. If not, gate check it at least. Saves a bit more wear and tear than checking it fully. If you are gate checking it, make sure it is covered, even if it is just a clear plastic bag. Any protection you can give it is better than none.

Good luck, and so sorry to hear about your Grandma.


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## snoopy5386 (May 6, 2005)

we have a cheap, lightweight carseat and a carseat bag for traveling. Ours is a $40 Cosco Scenera. We check it with the regular luggage. I am comfortable with the risk of:
1. the small possibility of the carseat being damaged while being checked
2. The even smaller possibility that we would get into a car accident while she is riding in the seat (she rides in it maybe 10 days a year)


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## Eclipsepearl (May 20, 2007)

I've flown 11 1/2 hour flights, pregnant alone with one and then two small children.

Wearing the baby is an absolute. You must have a comfortable, good, baby carrier. A front pack like a Bjorn wont cut it. A front/back carrier would be good.

Put the seat on a metal luggage cart and pull it behind you, if you can't somehow attach the seat to your stroller. Either will work.

You only need one carry on and make it a backpack. Put your valuables in a tiny purse on your neck and put the packpack either on your back or in the car seat.

People will say "Oh I checked my car seat and it was fine!" but the truth is that sometimes the damage is not visable and their child is riding in a car seat that wont protect the child in a crash. Scary thought! It's too important a safety item to simply send it down with the luggage where it could be thrown around and crushed under other bags.

...and what if the seat doesn't make it? How will you leave the airport??

Honestly, taking the car seat to the gate is not that big of a deal. If I can do it alone with three kids on countless transaltantics, you'll be fine with just one child. Our seat weighs 25lbs.

My non-commercial flying tips with a section on transporting car seats;
http://flyingwithchildren1.blogspot.com

Let me know if you have any more questions!

Hope grandma hangs in there!


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## meco (Mar 1, 2004)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Eclipsepearl* 
...and what if the seat doesn't make it? How will you leave the airport??


The airlines have loaner seats. The same thing that happens when they misplace your car seat. You can borrow one.

I also check my (mostly for travel given that we don't use a car) car seat as well because I don't like to deal with it while trying to make a tight layover or running across the entire airport to get to my gate while also dealing with my child and carry ons. If I am flying direct, I usually gate check it.

However, I would highly recommend a bag of some sort for the seat if you check it. They are not exactly kind to your bags.

If you do decide to carry it on or gate check it, you can always try to find a dolly type thing or a wheeled bag to place it in. That will make it easier to manage. I know once I also used a stroller to transport the car seat when gate checking it. That's also a possibility. You can also use it to hold your bags as well.


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## lunita1 (May 12, 2008)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *icy02* 
I am looking for any tips on flying with a (heavy) 1 yr old and a car seat. I heard that your not supposed to check the carseat with luggage. The luggage is really heavy and can damage the car seat?!? That means I am lugging a solid baby, a heavy car seat, and probably 2 carry on's. Did I mention I will be traveling myself and that I'm pregnant?







The only reason I am traveling is that my grandmother is very sick, and will possibly not make it much longer....

TIA

IMO, the only safe way to fly with a child is to buy him his own seat on the plane. Period. If we can't afford to pay for a seat for each member of my family, we don't fly. So we travel less. This isn't an insignificant issue for me -- all of my husband's family is in South America, and often the very cheapest seats available to their country are more than $1200 each. We don't get to see them anywhere near as often as we would like, and we fly into the capital and then take buses to their town to cut down on travel costs. Heck, we've even rented a car and driven to a larger hub within the US because it saved us airfare (flying out of LAX instead of SFO, even though we live in northern California).

I've been on flights where the turbulence was so severe that everything that wasn't buckled in went flying, hitting the ceiling, falling to the floor, etc. It happens in US airspace as well (I just talked to someone who experienced VERY SEVERE turbulence over Texas). You don't have to be in an accident for your child to be injured on an airplane.

Kayak.com and cheaptickets.com are good ways to find more inexpensive airfare.

ETA: I do only put my kids in carseats on planes when they're about 3 and under. If they're big enough for boosters by the most liberal definition of booster readiness, we check the boosters.


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## meco (Mar 1, 2004)

OP, note that severe turbulence is very rare and fatalities and injuries associated with it are also rare. Since 1980, only six events where one fatality has occurred have been reported. And 58 events since 2003 where an injury occurred (usually to a flight attendant) have been reported. While severe turbulence can be dangerous and knowing about it is useful, it is certainly nothing to over-stress or worry about when traveling with your small child.

If you are unable to take a car seat or don't want to (or if your child is like mine and would not stay in a car seat even if you did have it), you could always bring along a wrap or baby carrier if you were worried about the rare potential situation where there is severe turbulence.


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## Maedze (Dec 16, 2008)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *meco* 
*The airlines have loaner seats. The same thing that happens when they misplace your car seat. You can borrow one.*

I also check my (mostly for travel given that we don't use a car) car seat as well because I don't like to deal with it while trying to make a tight layover or running across the entire airport to get to my gate while also dealing with my child and carry ons. If I am flying direct, I usually gate check it.

However, I would highly recommend a bag of some sort for the seat if you check it. They are not exactly kind to your bags.

If you do decide to carry it on or gate check it, you can always try to find a dolly type thing or a wheeled bag to place it in. That will make it easier to manage. I know once I also used a stroller to transport the car seat when gate checking it. That's also a possibility. You can also use it to hold your bags as well.

The bolded is NOT a safe idea or recommended.

If there is a loaner seat available (and that's a huge IF), chances are solid that it is expired, broken, recalled, previously crashed, or has dried mystery biological material adhered to its crevices. A seat should never come from an unknown source.

Checking a seat is simply not safe. The seat can come out visibly damaged, rendering it unusable or even worse, can come out not obviously damaged, so you continue to use it only to find out in a crash that it was broken.


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## chickabiddy (Jan 30, 2004)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *meco* 
you could always bring along a wrap or baby carrier if you were worried about the rare potential situation where there is severe turbulence.

A wrap will not contain a child in severe turbulence.


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## petey44 (Nov 6, 2008)

I think a lot of it depends on your particular child. We just traveled with our dd (14 mo old at the time). We bought her her own seat, and planned on using her carseat on the trip. It turned out to be way too crowded for her to sit comfortably in my lap and nurse, which is where she wanted to be. The carseat kind of hung over from her seat into mine, so it was very cramped. My dd doesn't like her carseat anyway, and really didn't want to sit in it on the plane. So, at our layover, we gate checked the seat. It came out fine. A person carried it from the gate to the baggage hold and put it in. When we landed, a person carried it from the baggage hold to the gate and placed it on the ground. No damage. On our return flight we checked it with our normal baggage.
In short, my recommendations would be:
buy the child his own seat
check the carseat (gate check it if you're really concerned that the airline will damage it, although I don't think this happens often)
have a back-up plan both at your destination and back at home, for what to do if the carseat is lost/damaged


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