Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

Hi there,

Can anyone advise me on whether we have to take our car seat for the flight? My youngest will be 22 months old when we travel and as its such a long way we have paid for him to have his own seat even though age wise he is classed as an infant. The Cathay Pacific website is unclear it says:

Car Seat

Personal infant car seat is accepted on board if it complies with the following requirements:

Forward facing
Designed for carrying an infant inclusively between the age of 6 months and 3 years, and weighs 18kgs or less
Must be in operational condition

And then on the baggage allowance page it says the following\:

For passengers who are NOT departing from or transferring through London Heathrow Airport, in addition to the above allowance, you may carry onboard the following items free:
An overcoat or shawl
A small handbag
A briefcase (no more than 4kg or 9lbs in weight)
A notebook or laptop computer (no more than 4kg or 9lbs in weight, including case and accessories)
A small camera or a pair of binoculars
An umbrella / walking stick / crutches

A "forward facing" infant car safety seat for ticketed child (aged between 6 months and 3 years) or infant bassinet or cot (that can fit on fold down shelves and can be properly secured)

]Infant food and nappies (for consumption in flight)
An infant collapsible pushchair (if cabin stowage is available)

We are flying from Heathrow?? So does this mean we can't take it? and if so where does the baby sit just in a seat? Just really confused?

Can anyone who has travelled with a similar age baby please let me know what they did?

Thanks in advance! :thumbup:

Caz x

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

You never HAVE to take your car seat.

You may wish to, however in our personal experience the flight is much easier without it as

- kids sleep better
- you can't get past the car seat to walk down the row
- kids kick passenger in front
- if kids drop something you can't get it cos the car seats in the way.

Buzzy

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

And you also can't use UK car seats in Aus....

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

Thanks guys, actually it was the travel agent that told me you had to bring one? I am glad I checked here before I trudged all the way from Bloody northwest England to Heathrow with a car seat thats not needed and not even legal when I get there!

Caz :thumbsup:

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

Put it this way, you know when your darling child decides they don't want to go in the car seat and you end up giving a karate kick to the stomach to make them bend ;) so you can do the straps up? Imagine that for 24 hours :eek:

Before I'm reported, I wasn't being serious. I never kicked ;)

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

:rofl::rofl::rofl: very true very true! hehehehehehehehehehehe

:thumbsup:

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

What is the problem with using Uk car seats in Oz. They'd hardly arrest you? Is it more an insurance implication?

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

I know what some people have said about car seats but when we flew over we chose to bring ours and dump this end as they were very cheap spare ones ( you can get them off of ebay for £10).

We used 2 Britax Freeway car seats. Our kids at the time were about 15 months and 30ish months. We felt they would sleep far better in the car seat than in the seat on its own. We also didn't have to keep putting them on our laps during turbulence they could continue to sleep as they were strapped in.

The first flight wasn't that great but the second leg worked a dream. All 4 of us were asleep for ages. The kids felt comfortable with the seats.

we also used this thing

www.toteatot.com

Yes it is a hassle to carry them up and down a plane etc but we felt it was worth it given there ages. My little one would have been out of his seat every 3 seconds otherwise.

Hope this helps. Its just our experience.

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

Thanks for your reply its given me something to think about! I have never flown with the kids before and am finding the thought of it daunting to say the least!:eek:

Thanks again,

Caz :thumbsup:

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

Often it isn't as bad as you think. I don't think there is one of us that doesn't worry about flying.

Not that you asked for my tips but here goes:

don't look at your watch or count down the time. Take it minute by minute. (I promised myself not to look at that bloody map with the flight status last time and it was so much better. I just dealt with it minute by minute).

Don't worry about what others are thinking there isn't much point, you have to do what you have to do with the kids.

Its only 24hrs

Don't be afraid to ask for help. Even though there was my husband and I with the two little ones we still asked for help getting down to our seats.

Often there is more on the plane to entertain your child than you think (we bought lots of toys and they didn't look at them once)

Good luck

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

Who are you flying with? Here's a couple of threads of our experiences flying with 2 under-2s -

Heathrow car seats and baby milk - http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=405105

Qantas dreadful Jetstar excellent - http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=405635

Buzzy

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

I honestly can't believe the generosity of people on this forum! Thanks so much for even bothering to answer my silly question! You really don't know how much you help people who rely on these silly but annoying things!


thanks so much

Caz x :thumbsup:

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

:):)Cathay Pacfic ?? any thoughts
:)

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

I know this thread is a bit old, but I just discovered an alternative to a car seat. It's called the Cares Restraint. It's not a car seat, but it's a way to buckle them in similar to a car seat in the plane seat.

http://www.kidsflysafe.com/

I haven't used it yet, but we'll be using it on our trip to Canada next week. Our son will be 3 weeks shy of his second birthday and we aren't bringing a car seat because we've already got car seats lined up with relatives once we get to Canada. So bringing it on the plane is pointless for us aside from comfort.

My son is very busy and does not like to sit still for any length of time. So we're hoping the restrain will keep him in his seat better, and will allow him to sleep if he's not able to move around much. That's the theory anyway! Plus, we really don't want to be dragging the car seat around to and from the airport.

Something else to look into if you're not interested in bringing the car seat aboard.

Re: Car Seats for the flight? Confused?
 

We flew Cathay when we emigrated back in 2006. We flew business class as in those days we had a bit of money spare to do such a frivolous thing. We put our (then) 1 year old into his car seat which was strapped into his business class seat (God, we received some funny stares when people were boarding). We did this as Cathay said that priority for the bassinet is given to younger and lighter children. We didn't want to spend that kind of money and have our child in our laps. He slept all the way too (though we stopped in HK for 5 hours).

Taking it in business class was easy. Doing the same in economy would (in my opinion) be more difficult.

As for the airline, we felt cheated as they promised us (when we booked) that we would have flat-beds all the way to BNE. This was a lie as from HK to BNE we changed to a "regional" flight (yeah, HK is in the Australasia region apparently :mad:) which had your bog-standard upright business class seats. The flight from LHR to HK was, however, superb but given the amount that we spent (after some deliberation) we really felt pissed off with Cathay for telling us porkies about the seat-types on the last-leg of the journey.