Today most people wouldn’t think of driving across town with an infant in their arms. Infant car seats not only make sense; they are the law. Yet everyday in this country parents fly across the country holding infants in their laps. It doesn’t make any sense to airline safety expert, David Evans, “… You’ve got this small infant in a mother or father’s arms and it’s the only thing in the airplane that’s unrestrained.”
The concern? Infants are vulnerable in the unlikely event of a crash. The greater threat – that the child might be thrown about the cabin of the aircraft during moments of unpredictable and unexpected turbulence
The National Transportation Safety Board has been asking the FAA to implement an airline infant seat requirement for years, to no avail. Fox News contacted the FAA to ask why there is no airline infant seat requirement and received the following statement from FAA spokesman Les Dorr:
“We encourage — but do not mandate — the use of child safety devices on airplanes because of the increased safety risk to families who, if forced to purchase an extra airline ticket, might choose to drive. The risk is significantly greater in automobiles than in airplanes…”
It is true that using an infant child seat does require that parents purchase another seat, but as Deborah Hersman, the chairman of the NTSB – and a mother of three – told Fox News, “Every state in the country has requirements about buckling your child in an age and size-appropriate seat in automobiles. It’s no different in an aircraft situation. You must restrain them properly if you want them to have a good chance of survival if there’s an accident.”