The lifesaving example set by lap children; a battle of safety agencies

My grandson Henry takes a drink of water while riding on my lap on a commercial flight. While he would be a little safer during turbulence buckled into a seat, even on my lap he’s 50- 100 times safer than he would be riding in a car buckled into a car seat.

This blog entry is provided for reference in future discussions, and provides an interesting and  little-known explanation about why the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allows a child under age two to ride on an adult’s lap.   This FAA policy has saved the lives of hundreds of precious babies who would have crashed in cars, and prevented horrific injuries to hundreds more.  I’m sharing this information here because it is an excellent example of a complete, holistic safety analysis that has protected the most vulnerable in our society.  It’s also an example of two brilliant safety agencies both claiming the scientific high ground on an issue, where only one can rightfully claim it.  The FAA, which arguably sets the highest standard for safety of any agency anywhere, has been battling the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and consumer groups over this for decades.  The NTSB points out that parents can’t hold onto a child in high force conditions like a crash, or in heavy unexpected turbulence.  And they have data showing 298 passengers were injured by turbulence from 1980-2008, a rate of 10 injuries per year, although this is a total of all injuries and its not clear if any were babies.

Why the FAA allows lap children:

Flying commercially in the United States is currently about 20-50 times less likely to kill a passenger than riding in a car.  And flying is about 200 times less likely to leave a passenger with a life-altering injury.

The reason FAA allows children under age two to ride on their parents laps is that FAA has calculated that if parents of infants were required to buy another seat, a percentage of the young families would choose to drive instead of fly. Some of these diverted passengers would die in car accidents, and more would sustain life-altering injuries. Furthermore, in the rare event of a fatal airliner crash, there have been few babies, if any, that would have survived if they had been buckled into a seat, despite NTSB warnings.

Considering that 2.6 million people fly every day in the US, even one-tenth of one percent of them taking to the highways would quickly increase annual auto fatalities, currently around 42,000 annually.  My rough calculations say this FAA policy has probably saved hundreds of lives in these young families since this policy was debated and affirmed in 1995, and likely prevented thousands of maimings and head injuries.

In FAA parlance, families that chose to drive instead of fly are called “diverted passengers” You can read more in this  letter from FAA to a US Senator describing this rationale near the bottom of page 2.

The FAA has data to support their position about diversion, and every young family knows this is true.  If you are going to travel regionally (averaging 500 miles) by the time you factor in airport parking, checking in two-hours early, time in flight, possible delays, and fussing with a rental car, driving is a push timewise.  Increase the cost of the flight 50% by requiring a seat for the baby, and “boom” decision is made, “let’s drive”

The Lesson:

The National Transportation Safety Board continues to assert that the FAA should require seats for infants, pointing to potential for injuries of babies during turbulence, while ignoring the hundreds that would die on the highway, and the thousands that would sustain life altering injuries.  Both the FAA and NTSB are staffed with good scientists and engineers, so it’s alarming and noteworthy that they can’t arrive at a common conclusion about this.  Both agencies are committed to saving lives of babies, but while the FAA is actually doing it, NTSB has lost sight of the big picture as they focus on a handful of turbulence injuries and ignore real-life traveler behavior.

Fortunately for the flying public, the FAA has final say over airline policy.  So for the foreseeable future, more babies will be saved as their families choose to fly safely above the real danger on the roads below.

I enjoyed a 33 year career as an aerospace engineer/manager, and in many of my assignments I worked closely with the Federal Aviation Administration.  The engineers I worked with at FAA were some of  the finest engineers I’ve known.