YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Currently, aircraft seatbelts are designed for very quick release when needed with no training or muscle memory needed, shove your hand at your waist and pull the metal flap and it immediately comes apart. This seems like it could be an issue with baby carriers, since a) you can probably expect a bit more complex arrangement of straps buckles and b) lack of muscle memory or training on presumably a different style of carrier than what you ever ever use outside an airplane.

A second issue that comes to mind, how to do seating arrangements? Imagine a parent struggling to remove baby during a emergency. Imagine a 3 seat row window side, where others are stuck waiting for parent to release baby.

This seems like a certification nightmare

With our kids, we used two different devices. One was just a long strip of cloth that you tie in a special way. The other was a more structured carrier with straps and buckles and all that good stuff. For both of them, the child faces toward the parent, so they would be rear-facing relative to the plane. And both have an option to fully support the head. The main purpose there is just to protect their neck while sleeping or during moderate activity, but it would offer at least some additional protection against neck injuries in a crash, rough landing, or during periods of turbulence.

Perhaps crush injuries are more likely with the baby strapped to you, but honestly I would be more worried about a parent holding their baby being more likely to drop them in the aisle during an evacuation, which would be more likely to endanger everyone behind them on the plane as well.

Aren't airlines responsible for the well-being of everyone on a plane? That seems like it kind of goes with the territory of charging money for hurtling people across the sky in a giant metal box.

There is an existing international standard (ISO 13216) for child safety seats in cars:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isofix

It could be added to airplanes seats.

The point is that the "return" - in a vanishingly tiny number of cases, the kinematics is very slightly better (maybe I buy that it is slightly better, without doing research, but it can't possibly be much better) - is not at all worth the "investment" - every single parent of every single baby on every single flight having to put up with a very real annoyance.

you'll be dead so it won't matter much.

I only ever heard/said this. Seeing it in print, I suddenly realize it must be "worse comes to worst"

there is a use for the other phrase (but nobody uses it this way), should the worst (thing) come to the worst (people), then... just desserts?

https://www.amsafe.com/kidsflysafe-com/

Rigid carriers are already permitted on planes, as long as they're FAA approved (which many are). You attach them with the seatbelt, and the flight attendants check.

What I'm proposing in this post is that the FAA not require parents to remove lab infants from babywearing carriers.

FAA calls all of these devices, in general, child restraint systems. Rigid seats with harnesses are allowed under FAA rules. The real consideration is blocked egress, since a large, rigid device strapped to a seat could actually make egress more challenging. That is covered in a more subjective advisory circular, which allows airlines to make policy, e.g., it may only be used at a window seat of a non-exit row.

Since FAA just this month has decided to start enforcing a 1992 rule requiring even so much as a paper cup to be stowed before pushback citing the egress concern, we might even expect some new policy on this.

> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead. Since driving is far less safe than flying, a ban would lead to more deaths. I'd love to see more of this "all things considered" thinking around bans.

If you’re being guilt tripped into switching seats so that a family with a young child can sit together, consider blaming the airline for not automatically seating a young child next to their guardian.

In a full on crash situation infants are not going to do well, so optimising for much more likely turbulence injuries (for which having the baby strapped as securely as possible is definitely a good idea!) seems more important.

I really don't understand people who accept inconveniences for themselves or for other people without any interest in examining whether those inconveniences are serving any useful purpose. Everything like this should be interrogated. Yes, most things don't matter at all, but we still shouldn't do them if they're dumb. Some things - like this example - matter a bit more. It's not the end of the world, but waking up a sleeping baby can easily ruin the rest of a family's day. If there is a good reason for that, then no biggie, if the reason is nonsensical, then no.