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Parenting
Flying: check carseat or take it onboard?
Flying with dd for the first time tomorrow: check the carseat and have her just buckle up, or take the carseat on the plane?
I'm hesitant to take the seat because the last time I flew with ds the seat got stuck on the plane and couldn't be unbuckled. Plus I'm going to have my hands full with dd, our carry-on bags, connecting flights, etc. Dragging a heavy a$$ carseat through the airport while trying to make a connection sounds like a nightmare.
On the other hand, if I check the seat what will I do if I get to our destination and the luggage doesn't make it? I tend to have bad luck with airlines misplacing my luggage, go figure.
What do you do when you fly?
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Re: Flying: check carseat or take it onboard?
I take it with me, because of what you mentioned at the end--I'm afraid that when we arrive the seat will either not arrive or arrive damaged and be unusable. Can you pick up a luggage cart at Target or somewhere tonight? Place the car seat on the luggage cart, stick a bungee cord through the beltpath to attach it to the luggage cart, stick DD in the car seat OR pile your carry-ons in the car seat and hold DD's hand... Would that work?
When I flew in the past I gate checked the carseat. I was too paranoid to regular check it in case it got lost, plus I wasn't regular checking anything else (one trip DH and his dad were driving and I was flying with MIL so they had the luggage, the other it was a weekend trip so we only had a carry on).
Carseat experts are now saying that it's not really safe to check a carseat because you don't know if bag handlers will throw it around and treat it poorly leading to an effectively "crashed" carseat (even if it wasn't in an accident, if it was thrown around it could undergo the same sort of damage an accident would have given it). If I were to fly now I'd likely use the seats on the plane because of that (the previous times Julia was a lap baby so it wasn't an option).
I'd check it right away--lugging it through the airport SUCKS!!! We had a tight connection and carried one with us. H was drenched with sweat and I was going nuts dragging the girls through the airport. It was NOT worth it.
We've checked them both with our suitcases and at the gate. Honestly, the one we gate checked seemed to take a bigger beating. We actually have two spare carseats that we use for airplane travel. Could they have been unknowingly damaged? I suppose. But we're using them 1 week out of the year.
Am I the only one who has never seen a carseat actually IN an airplane seat? I cannot recall ever seeing that.
I took it on the plane until DD was 4.5 (and DS was here by that point). After that I got a nice carseat bag with wheels AND backpack straps to check it at ticketing.
If you rotate the buckle one twist (180 degrees), it shouldn't get stuck (works with my seats anyway).
Until I checked her seat at ticketing, I carried it with cheeky monkey pac-back straps. Very convenient. Now I carry DS's that way. When he was a lap baby, I'd gate check it at the last minute if there were no available seats and now he gets his own seat to ride in.
I am going to visit a sister, but she doesn't have a carseat that we can use and she couldn't think of anyone she knew who might have a spare seat we could use for the week so it looks like we're hauling ours along.
I did go to WalMart late last night and bought a luggage cart. Dd's seat bungee cords to it quite nicely, so I think we should be able to get through the airport without too much trouble.