Three years later, Khadija Zaidi-Rashid still remembers the screams of other passengers, the restless expression on the face of the flight attendant and the impotence he felt holding his baby in his lap.
Dr. Zaidi-Rashid, 34, then a doctoral student, flew from Washington to Doha, Qatar, with her mother and two children when her plane found severe turbulence. His other son, a young boy, was in a seat next to her, and half an hour of the roller coaster trembling and bucking felt like hours. Since then, although they all emerged unharmed, it cannot overcome the feeling of concern on each flight it takes.
“Turbulence has made me feel claustrophobic, all kinds of anxiety related to motherhood,” he said, added that he no longer sleeps during flights. He is concerned that his children, now older, escape from their seat belts they must now have. He often keeps his hand on them as caution.
She is not alone. In recent months, after a series of terrifying air accidents and accidents in the asphalt, parents have polished on online message boards and illuminate group chats to download their anxieties on the next flights and long -standing safety standards for family trips.
Accidents, which included a collision in the air in Washington and a plane turned in Toronto, have driven concerns about whether young children in the airplanes, particularly babies, are sufficiently protected. The concern has forced some parents to rethink how they fly, and many of them consider options that range from bringing car seats to cancellation trips.
Keep babies safe in the air
Holding his little son in his lap has been acceptable on air trips for decades. The practice, that airlines allow travelers under 2 years of age to fly or with a strong discount, save parents or caregivers. Parents list the convenience and comfort of their children as other key motivators.
But the security of the practice has been discussed for decades.
Aviation security agencies worldwide have made clear their position: children are safer in airplanes when they are insured in their own seats in approved child restriction systems, such as certified car seats for aircraft use.
“His arms are not able to keep their child in the turnaround safely, especially during unexpected turbulence,” warns the Federal Aviation Administration on its website. The Aviation Security Agency of the European Union establishes that several studies have concluded that children’s security seats provide “a security level equivalent to the one provided to adult passengers.”
Pediatricians, hostesses and academics agree. They emphasize high risks that LAP children are injured. They could be beaten by the service cars in flight or by objects that fall from the luggage containers.
A 2019 study in Pediatric Emergency Care magazine found that of approximately 114,000 medical events that occurred on flights between 2009 and 2014, more than 12,000 including children. Of these, approximately 2,000 children from LAP involved, making them more than the “double probability of suffering a flight injury compared to other medical events in flight.”
But if parents want to use car seats or other security equipment on board, the rules differ in the airline (or even by the seat in the aircraft). What equipment is available can also vary. Some aircraft have cribs, which can be requested but not guaranteed on travel day. Not all car seats fit in smaller airplanes. In Europe, children’s safety belts that assure a child to a father are available, although they are not allowed in the United States and Canada due to the concerns that the abdomen of a child could be seriously injured by the seat belt or the father. There are even rules that babies cannot be used in carriers during takeoff and landing, the most dangerous periods of a flight.
Lack of legislation
The official language of FAA about children flying is just a warning, without legal weight. The legislation even to authorize a new study of children’s safety while flying, introduced in Congress almost two years ago, has stagnated.
The lack of federal regulation on the children of the light gives parents “the wrong assumption that if allowed to be safe,” said Jan Brown, a former United Airlines hostess.
In 1989, Mrs. Brown survived a plane accident in Iowa in which 111 of 296 people died on board, including passengers and crew. Flight attendees advised parents to place their children at their feet, the standard security guide at that time. There were four round babies on the flight and one, a 23 -month -old boy, died.
It is incredibly weird that any passenger dies in a commercial plane accident, and aviation is still much safer than driving. This was the conclusion of a study on the use of the car seat in the airplanes made in 1994 by the FAA, the report said that, although the car seats were the safest place for children, which requires that parents buy an additional seat would deter them from flying. Instead, they would resort to driving, a statistically more lethal transit form.
However, there has been no substantive investigation into whether a significant number of families would lead instead of flying due to the cost of buying a seat for their baby, said William McGee, the main member of the American Economic Liberties project, a non -profit research and defense group.
“It should be noted that at no time has FAA studied its own theory,” he said. “On the other hand, it has always been assumed, without any statistical analysis, surveys, public comments or significant investigation, which is directed to the procedures for preparing federal government rules.”
Lia Tuso, an expert in children’s passengers, said that child security remains a “deficiency in the airline industry.”
Airlines generally do not point out the safety risks of LAP children on their websites, only that they are allowed.
Hannah Walden, a Trade Group Airlines for America spokesman, said in a statement that US Airlines “follows the orientation and regulations established by our security regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration.”
But a palpable change in culture, said Tuso, may be happening: parents are increasingly aware of the risks, using car seats and other alternatives more frequently on flights. They are increasingly crowdsourcing for guidance on equipment and best practices to avoid flying with their children on their laps.
Although there are many rules for adults flying in airplanes, said Chelsea Nicholls, the mother of a 16 -month -old boy, is as if “there were no rules for children.”
Mrs. Nicholls, 35, a Marketing Executive from New Canaan, Connecticut, previously believed that flying with a car seat was difficult to drive and not very practical. Before a recent flight to Florida, however, he bought a seat from his daughter and a harness approved by the FAA.
“I never felt that I was an anxious person,” he said. “Sometimes it gives its own security sometimes, but when you take care of a young child, many thoughts begin to flood your mind.”
Traveling to Florida, Mrs. Nicholls said she felt “comfortable and safe” when he saw his son tied to his own seat, especially during the occasional potholes of the flight.
“It definitely let me relax a bit,” he said.
Delaney and Jake Steele, from Vancouver, Washington, were on the flight of Alaska Airlines in January 2024 with their daughter, Quinnette, when a door cap blew out of the cabin while the plane was ascended. Five rows were sitting back and on the opposite side of the hole in Buga. Quinnette, who was then 9 months old, was in the lap of Mrs. Steele.
The sudden loss of air pressure was the “most noisy thing you have heard,” said Steele, 36. They fought to keep the oxygen mask in their daughter, which shouted and became redder per minute.
The possibility that his son could have been absorbed from the plane did not hit Mrs. Steele, 30, until after they landed. She has not set foot on a plane since then.
“I don’t know how comfortable the little ones will take,” said Steele, who, together with her husband, filed a lawsuit against Alaska Airlines and Boeing, the manufacturer of the plane. The couple now has a second child, 5 months. “Now, if we fly before they have 2, it is a fact that will somehow be tied.”
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