The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, a union representing flight attendants, is campaigning for a new regulation to ban parents from
traveling with babies
on their laps. This goes back to a 1989
plane crash
in which Sara Nelson, who is now the union president but was then a
flight attendant
, told parents to put infants on the floor, which was then standard emergency procedure.
One child died in the crash, and the archaic procedure was changed, as it should have been.
Parents
are now instructed to hold on to their babies during turbulence or in preparing for a crash. This is an improvement over putting them on the floor.
DON’T FALL FOR BIDEN’S CENTRIST HEAD FAKE
But banning parents from traveling with babies and infants on their laps would not be a welcome change and was wisely rejected by the Federal Aviation Administration long ago.
There was an effort a generation ago to impose a new regulation requiring that tickets be purchased for infants and that they travel in special safety seats. This is roughly what the union is demanding now. But the FAA withdrew the proposal and continues to reject it. This is because research shows that the rule would move more families from air travel to road travel, which would produce a net increase in the number of infant deaths.
The FAA estimated that a ban on lap babies would oblige families traveling with infants to pay 45% more. Some of those parents — it wouldn’t take much — would save money by traveling by car, which is much less safe than flying.
The data, as of 2005, suggested it would mean 13 to 42 additional deaths over 10 years. Those numbers were small but sufficient enough to prompt the FAA to cancel the regulation. An FAA review in 2011 pointed to an even greater increase in travel deaths if babies were not allowed to fly on their parents’ laps — 72 additional deaths over 10 years and 115 over 15 years.
The FAA review
pointed out
that there had been “no preventable infant deaths in air carrier operations for more than 17 years.” Now, almost 12 years later, there still haven’t been any more such deaths. This means there have been only three preventable deaths of infants traveling on their parents’ laps in the last 43 years of U.S. commercial aviation.
With this in mind, the agency concluded that it “cannot assume more than one possible save every 10 to 15 years” out of an estimated 8.5 million lap infants flying safely in the past decade.
Airline unions find it easy to advocate this unnecessary regulation because it would hardly affect them. Many more infants would die, however, and the union’s membership and leadership would not be there to see it or take responsibility on the nation’s highways.
The only thing recommending the regulation is an anecdote about an incident that traumatized the union president. That is no recommendation for a policy switch. The trade-offs make it obviously unjustifiable.
Instead of bowing to a union demand that would keep planes full and increase job security in a troubled industry, government officials should reject regulations that impose more hassle and expense on parents, who are performing the most important and thankless job in the nation today.
Government must understand that safetyism, as with unnecessary COVID-19 school closures, can inflict severe damage on family life. Data suggest that state laws requiring car seats for ever-older children prompt families to have fewer children.
According to one study
, state laws requiring almost-preteens to ride in booster seats prevent only 57 child deaths a year (out of 43,000 total fatalities) but mean 8,000 fewer annual births. That is, 8,000 families that wanted another child but decided against it because it would mean buying a bigger car.
That such trade-offs and undesirable consequences do not matter, or do not even cross the minds of some union leaders, politicians, and bureaucrats, is a serious problem.
