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Child Seats on Planes
Friday
June 8, 2001
Ten thousand infants and toddlers fly on commercial airlines each day in this country.
And the FAA reports that every year dozens of children are injured, some killed, because parents choose to hold a child in their laps rather than buy an additional seat on the plane.
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In 1999, in Little Rock, Arkansas, eleven people died in a terrifying plane crash. But Stephanie Manus and her two young daughters survived. Stephanie says 18-month-old Emily is only alive today because of her safety seat.
She says, "I know that if she had been in my lap I couldn't have held onto her."
A dramatic government test video proves that. No matter how tightly held, on impact children are jerked forward, out of control.
Extra's travel detective Peter Greenberg says there is nothing a parent can do. “It is physically impossible for you, because of g-forces and inertia, to maintain the grasp on your child in a hard landing."
Strapped into a car seat, kids can survive. But that means buying an extra seat. But most parents don't want to pay for that extra seat. Under current airline regulations, children under 2 fly free on their parent’s laps. But you may not know that half price fares are available for those kids if you use a safety seat.
And now there's another option for securing your child
one while in the air. Greg Nieberding is co-president
of Baby
B'air, a protective vest that keeps kids strapped
to a parent during flight.
Greg explains, “They take and slip their seatbelt through the back loop, buckle their seatbelt back down and through the rest of the flight the baby is secured to their parents lap."
The vest is FAA approved during flight, but not for takeoff and landing; only a car seat is allowed for that. And the good news is that lawmakers are finally talking about making child safety seats mandatory.
But when it comes to the safety of your children, do you really want to wait?
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