Small Miles

Should you book a seat for your baby?

Stow your carry-on baby under the seat in front of you.

If you have an under two-year-old, should you book her a seat on the airplane?

Short answer: YES, for Pete’s sake, YES.

Long answer: If you can afford it, buy the seat. It’s always safer to have your child in a safety restraint.

That being said, I have flown many a time with a babe on my lap. In fact, I have never bought my child his own seat or brought a car seat on board in the many times that I have flown with Miles. So, if you’ve accepted the risk associated with flying without a seat for your baby, read on.

• If your child is under six months old or can’t yet sit up on their own, it’s not essential. It’s nice to have a place to put your extra stuff. But your kid is probably just going to be happiest sitting on your lap anyway. Car seat hatred peaks around four or five months, so, you know, if you want everyone on the plane to think your baby is being slowly tortured, strap them in their own seat.
• The time between six months and 12 months is the gray zone of baby ticket buying. If your child is a finger-walker or a pro-crawler, they will not want to be contained on your lap for very long. You’ll need to pack an arsenal of awesome toys to keep your baby entertained, and you’ll have to pray hard that the white noise of the plane knocks him out for a two hour nap.
• 12 months to 23 months…buy the ticket. This is when flying with a child on my lap became decidedly unfun. We ended up with an extra seat in a row of three on our way from Edinburgh to Newark last summer. I cried when the flight attendant announced that they had closed the airplane door and all of my wishes came true. I am still planning on flying from Buffalo to Los Angeles in December with Miles on my lap at 18 months because it is ding dang expensive to fly at Christmastime. DING DANG. He will probably roundhouse me in the face. However, the nice thing about one-year-olds is that they actually enjoy watching short TV shows and playing games on the iPad, so they can be entertained for a few hours without them trying to style your hair with a banana or scream into the ears of seat 26C.
• From two on, you’re buying the seat whether you want to or not.