Traveling with a car seat and a stroller

Everything about child restraint is designed around one car you own and understand. Travel removes that. Three distinct problems appear, and they have different answers.

On the aircraft. The FAA strongly recommends that children under 40 lb be restrained in an approved child restraint system rather than held on a lap, and airlines must allow an approved seat to be used in a purchased seat. Approval is shown by a label on the seat itself — the wording to look for is that the seat is certified for use in both motor vehicles and aircraft. Boosters are not approved for takeoff and landing because they need a lap-and-shoulder belt, and aircraft have lap belts only. Details in car seat rules on airplanes.

Getting the equipment there. Car seats and strollers generally fly free as child equipment, and most airlines let you take a stroller to the gate and collect it on the airbridge. Checked child equipment does get thrown, which is why a travel bag and a photograph of the undamaged seat before you hand it over are both sensible. See flying with a car seat and stroller.

The car at the other end. Rental car seats are a real option and a real gamble: you cannot verify the history, you often cannot choose the model, and you may not get a manual. We think renting a seat is acceptable for short trips when the alternative is not traveling, and we set out what to check at the counter in rental cars and car seats.

A travel seat is not a different safety category — it still has to meet FMVSS 213 like everything else. What makes one worth carrying is a specific combination of properties that have nothing to do with how good it is in your own car:

• Weight you can carry through a terminal with a child, a bag and a boarding pass. Under about 10 lb changes the experience completely.
• A narrow shell that fits a coach seat without fouling the armrests or the passenger next door.
• Belt-only installation done well. Rental cars and taxis may have no usable LATCH, so the seat needs to install cleanly with a lap-and-shoulder belt alone.
• FAA approval printed on the label, if it is going on the plane.
• A fold or a bag, for boosters especially — a folding booster in a backpack is a completely different proposition from a rigid one.

The mistake on a road trip is treating a car seat like a seat. A harnessed car seat holds a child semi-reclined and largely immobile, and for a young infant there are real limits on how long that should continue without a break — the same limits that apply to naps in a travel system. For a newborn, planning stops roughly every couple of hours to take the baby out of the seat entirely is the conservative and widely-recommended approach.

The other road trip mistake is aftermarket clutter. Mirrors, organizers, tablet holders and toys all become projectiles in a crash unless they are soft or genuinely secured. We are pro-accessory where the accessory earns it and say so where it does not — see accessories and the road trip guide.