Babies & Flybe!

sophiedb

We're planning a trip to France with our little girl, who'll be 4 months old by then.

Flybe's FAQ tells me that "a car seat/booster seat will be charged as an item of baggage unless the infant is using it onboard the plane", but can anyone tell me what they expect you to do with it on the plane? Does it go on the floor, in a seat, on my lap??

The alternative is to hire one with the car, but I'd rather save the euros!

Also, "there is no charge for the carriage of either pushchairs / prams or carrycots", but "the passenger is permitted to use the pushchair for the child to the point of boarding where they will then be required to hand it to the ground staff for stowage in the aircraft hold". Fine thing, however I'm a little worried about how well it'd survive the trip. Does anyone know if they're wrapped up or otherwise protected? I'd take a cheapie £10 pushchair if she was big enough, but that's a few months off.

I was going to call the customer info centre, but that's £1/min *phhhbt*

cheers, Soph

angelfire

hiya, when we first took our daughter abroad on a plane she was 17 months, so older than your baby will be but the rules would still be the same.

We decided to take our car seat along with us as the ones you get with hire cars can be very old and worn, may not comply with our current safety regulations and most certainly will not come with any fitting instructions and you'll have to fit it yourself. (this was proved last week when we asked our airport transfer to include car seats and the ones that were provided were big enough, but had no fitting instructions, we fitted them as best we could, but they really were not all that safe).

as for your car seat on the plane, well when we took ours it was with BA - they checked it in on the way out but on the way back we asked if they had any spare seats on which to fix it and they did, so let us take it onboard. (our daughter still had to go on our lap for take off and landing mind..)

It sounds to me like unless there is a spare seat on your flight, the check in desk will check the seat in with the rest of your baggage and charge you. Personally, I would choose this option so that you know you've a safe, correctly fitted seat at the other end.

As for the buggy, weve taken ours loads of times and they let you keep it til you are actually on the aircraft, then you fold it down and they stow it away - ours has never suffered any damage. We've taken an M&P pulse buggy, which reclines all the way back, so something like this might be worth getting hold of for your holiday? You don't say what model pushchair you have currently, but to be fair, as long as it's not absolutely huge, they should take it.

daveyjp

Our buggy goes in it's own bag - Quinny Zapp. They come up on e-bay. This pushchair also takes a car seat, when we took it to Tenerife (with our then 7 month old) BA classed it as a pushchair, even though the fabric seat wasn't in it.