The decision to not require seats is one of the best regulatory decisions I have ever heard of, and I wish this kind of thought process was more present in all kinds of places. The funny thing is that, I bet if it were used more broadly, given the absolutely enormous safety advantage that flying has over basically any other mode of transportation, there would be a non trivial number of other flight safety regulations that would get reconsidered.
Going back to pre-9/11 security screening would probably save lives. The extra time & hassle required to get through security (and the fact that only passengers can go through) means that some people drive instead of fly. Driving is less safe than flying, so some of those people die in car wrecks.
> The extra time & hassle required to get through security (and the fact that only passengers can go through) means that some people drive instead of fly.
I suspect it leads to more people not travelling at all (or much shorter distances) and net saves lives in both the relatively immediate travel sense and even moreso in the broader analysis including net carbon emissions and their effect in climate change.
(It is still a mix of corrupt corporatism and authoritarian conditioning that should be ended for that reason.)
I'm not sure I disagree. I don't have numbers but, anecdotally, you sure hear a lot of "But flying is such a hassle" which is sorta true but not sure how much more than it's ever been especially if you're willing to pay a bit more. I'm not sure how many people translate that into "So I'll just drive 1,000 miles instead."
In Europe (and the US Northeast Corridor), I do favor trains to avoid going to and dealing with airports, but they're no panacea either. And I say this as someone with the various passes that make flying easier.
I can drive for 5 hours, or take the 1 hour flight. The one hour flight has a total time of over 5 hours when you include getting to the airport, clearing security and getting bags at the other end. Plus I will not have a vehicle. For one person the cost is probably a wash, for two or more driving will be cheaper. 1000 miles does tip towards flying. Under 300 miles driving is going to be way less hassle to drive.
It has very little to do with security though. I usually go through security in 5 minutes at my home airport. I do leave a lot more time than that partially because my car company sort of insists on it. (Of course, the car company is another cost.)
Honestly, it would be faster and possibly cheaper for me to drive to Manhattan than take the train--in which case security doesn't enter in at all. And certainly for two people. But I hate driving into Manhattan.
The math does pencil out for Boston to New York. I'd be an hour to my local airport, arrive 2 hours in advance (could cheat a bit with an early flight especially given basically a commuter flight), a good hour drive in, probably an hour for a shortish flight, baggage claim (if relevant), then transportation into the city.
Were I amenable, which I'm generally not, could probably drive 4 hours from my house into the city. (Almost always take the train.)
While I don't disagree and I think a lot of it is just nonsense security theater, it is probably worth noting that incidents of airline terrorism have fallen completely off the map in this new regime.
Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.
There's at least some element of Chesterton's fence that could come into play here.
> Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.
The period where hijackings were “common” (an exaggeration even then) ended around the time the first airline security screening requirements were adopted, about 30 years before 9/11 and (and just a little bit before I was born, and I am in my 50s.)
Airline bombings were NEVER common in the US (there are three I can find reference to, the most recent in 1962 and the others in 1933 and 1955.) They have been more of an issue internationally, but obviously US screening rules have done fuck-all about that, and they have continued.
I would argue that high speed regional rail would address this as well. How many flights from regional airports to major hubs could be eliminated with a decent train?
Regular rail is already this, and for much of the Northeast is already roughly at or near time parity with flying, all things considered. If you have to arrive at the airport 2 hours early, and it takes 30 minutes-1 hour to leave by whatever means (renting a car, waiting for a bus or Uber, etc. + baggage return and simply walking through the airport), and then another 30 minutes-hour to actually arrive at your destination, arriving at your local station 10 minutes before departure and arriving in the city center/local destination station starts to look really attractive for flights of <2 hours/train rides of <6 hours.
High speed rail is only cost-effective between major cities that are within a few hundred miles or so. Otherwise you don't have enough passengers to recoup the cost of building & maintaining the rail system.
For example: Spokane to Seattle is about 230 miles in a straight line, or 280 miles driving. A flight takes less than an hour (not even 40 minutes of which is spent in the air) and costs $80-130 one way. A train traveling 200mph nonstop would take 1 hour 24 minutes. Building high speed rail costs $20-$200 million per mile (the upper end of that is California HSR). If we optimistically assume $20m/mile, constructing the line will cost $5.6b. If all SEA-GEG passengers (677k per year) choose to take rail instead of flying, and we want the project to pay for itself after 50 years, then each ticket will need to cost $165. This also assumes no cost to maintain or operate the rail line.
You sent me down a rabbit hole, thank you, reading about the current state of Cascadia HSR, what it would take to make the current 79mph tracks capable of 110mph or 125mph (spoiler, 110mph is barely worthwhile and 125mph is an overt waste of effort), etc. The more I look at the numbers, the more I think the future does not look like HSR in the PNW. Wildly expensive, low ridership.
I wonder if we could not get most of the benefit by doing substantially cheaper options like separating freight from rail on major routes, electrifying parts of it where feasible. And maybe taking specific segments in areas where the track conditions are already favorable and increasing the maximum speeds on those segments. Probably two-thirds of the route between Portland and Salem, for example, is already suitable with modest upgrades to hit 125 mph. And basically all modern trains are capable of that speed already.
> (spoiler, 110mph is barely worthwhile and 125mph is an overt waste of effort)
whyfor? I guess I don't know how I would price "get there faster" in a reasonable way.
> separating freight from rail on major routes
that does seem to often be the limiter in North American passenger rail, but I don't know how economically feasabile it is to separate the two. I assume railroads are moderately expensive to maintain.
Do you have any evidence on this? As a personal anecdote, driving is as much a hassle if not more than flying, depending on the distance. I care more about cost first and time second. Even if you buffer in getting to the airport 2 hours early, flying is almost certainly the fastest (compared to driving and train, if available) unless you're flying from like, bos -> nyc. Security at airports hasnt felt like a hassle for me in years (at least the past six years).
I had two recent trips to the same destination. I drove once because it was so much cheaper (during the world cup when air fare was jacked up) compared to the train or flying. I flew the other time, because it was only a little more expensive and flying is faster and less of a hassle, actually.
Additionally, given the article talks about families, the cost comes down a lot with multiple people in one car vs multiple plane tickets. If we want to make travel safer by putting fewer cars on the road, make alternatives cheaper. They're already more convenient to me...
> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead.
Is this really why the rule was made? Did they really have safety of driving in mind or is this just in the interest of the profits of airlines?
It seems like if they really had safety in mind there are better solutions:
* Subsidize the 2nd seat for parents with children from tax dollars
> Is this really why the rule was made? Did they really have safety of driving in mind or is this just in the interest of the profits of airlines?
Yes. There are multiple public documents showing this, ex:
> The FAA has determined it is not appropriate to mandate the use of CRSs in aircraft now. We remain concerned that if we require children under 2 years old to be in an approved restraint system (which requires a passenger seat), affected operators might find it necessary to charge a fare for transporting these children. (Currently most, if not all, operators do not charge a fare for children under 2 years old who are held in an adult's lap.) In turn, for economic reasons some adults might decide to drive in automobiles to their destinations rather than fly. The FAA is concerned because automobile injury and fatality rates are higher than aircraft injury and fatality rates. As a result, there would be a net increase in transportation injuries and fatalities as families opt, for economic reasons, to drive rather than fly to their destinations.
I mean, the head of the FAA and the head of the DOT can have a coffee chat with the president and get an executive order then? Anything is possible to do, apparently.
Sort of tangential to the rulemaking discussion but I’ve had two flight attendants note that unbuckling the carrier during takeoff and landing is required due to the risk of breaking the child’s back.
If the adult is pitched forward with the child strapped to their chest (facing inward) then they risk bending the child’s spine backwards.
"All things considered" is easily attacked by vultures and businesses typically pick it apart.
PFAS bans are another where the whole class is likely hazardous but EPA will continue chasing specific molecules rather than consider the whole class.
Now adays, chem engineering will just put different monomers in and move on untill 20 years and we find, all things considered, it still reaches humans at toxic levels.
hot take: we should instead disincentivize parents taking their very young on planes, as babies experience a lot of pain and pressure from flying at altitude, that is unnecessary. Where is SO important that you need to take a baby with you on a plane?
What is so important that you need to get on a plane?
See this is what has bugged me so much about how common anti-natalism has become. It has become diluted but present everywhere.
Children are a part of our society. They are a part of your community. They are going to be around you, they are going to be where you don’t want them to be, they are just going to be present in general. And this can’t possibly be a safety argument, as planes I believe are the safest mode of transportation. If you’re worried about safety, then kids should never get in cars, which is also completely unfeasible.
So if it’s not about safety, then what is this really about?
You are right that there are no good reasons to travel with babies, visiting my terminally Ill mother over the several years of her decline was indeed a nightmare with young children, we would not have put ourselves through that otherwise.
I have encountered this many times flying so it’s not “no one”. It’s usually younger couples who either don’t know what they are getting into or just have the energy to deal with it.
On international flights from the US it’s common to hear the reason is to bring the baby to see extended family.
That’s not correct. I took my small children on vacations to grandparents all the time. Taking the kids to any extended family that can help watch them is a vacation. The best vacations you can have involve just taking kids to see family.
> Approximately nobody “flies for fun” under that tortured definition.
Yes. That is exactly how it’s supposed to be used. The vast majority of people do not enjoy the airport/airline experience and were there any other reasonable way to get where they are going they would probably take it. They are not doing it because it is fun, they are doing it because they have to.
Do you seriously think that parents are flying with infants for the lolz? The vast majority are not. It’s a major operation for both child and parents.
“What is so important that you need to take a baby on a plane” and “Have you thought about driving instead?” have got to be some of the most clueless and unempathic takes I’ve ever read. Ironic considering that’s what you’re accusing parents of.
> Where is SO important that you need to take a baby with you on a plane?
I would guess that in most cases, someone is flying with an infant because they are going somewhere important and traveling with their infant was the best option available to them.
Traveling by air (or at all) with an infant is not fun and I can’t imagine that ever being anyone’s first choice.
So when you see frazzled parents at the airport with their young children, assume the best and be kind.
I flew with my six month old a while back with no issues. Gave her a bottle on both the ascent and the descent so her ears would pop and that worked perfectly.
She slept like a baby for most of the 5 hour flight and only cried once for maybe 60 seconds when she got hungry and I had to prep a bottle.
It definitely didn't seem like "babies experience a lot of pain" holds true at all if you plan for it
Can you truly not think of a long list of things that are important enough and far enough away that it makes sense to take a baby on a plane? I could start writing you a list, but it seems like you should probably think about it for more than two seconds first.
Good thing you spawned into the world as a fully formed adult and never had to be a burden on society, unlike all these other _kids_ and their greedy parents.
I read SO MUCH of this thinking we would get to "mobile phone carriers" (meaning "mobile phone providers") before I realized I was wishing for the wrong argument. Ha!
I don't think you should have to turn off your phone when flying. If I remember correctly the evidence for it is quite weak. Maybe it's still the same argument, lets consider all the variables.
There is a deeper issue, in a crash, a poorly secured rigid baby carrier seat becomes a potentially lethal projectile. Worst comes to worst, today, the projectile is an infant. An infant is substantially softer and less massive than a rigid seat containing an infant.
For soft babywearing carriers, the outlook is also grim. The kinematics of the baby, adult, carrier and airplane seat lead to crush injuries that are worse than the poorly restrained arm hold version.
Could there be a solution here that straps around a seat to give babies a safe seat?
Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be easy to use or consumer friendly. The ideal solution would have the baby with their back facing front, and the attached carrier facing inwards towards the seat. It would have to be carefully specced and tested so no unverified, third-party seats... Logically extrapolated, in this scenario, the airline becomes responsible for the baby's wellbeing. And I don't think that's a good place for the airlines to be?
I'll bet that is less of an issue than the issue of evacuation.
Currently, aircraft seatbelts are designed for very quick release when needed with no training or muscle memory needed, shove your hand at your waist and pull the metal flap and it immediately comes apart. This seems like it could be an issue with baby carriers, since a) you can probably expect a bit more complex arrangement of straps buckles and b) lack of muscle memory or training on presumably a different style of carrier than what you ever ever use outside an airplane.
A second issue that comes to mind, how to do seating arrangements? Imagine a parent struggling to remove baby during a emergency. Imagine a 3 seat row window side, where others are stuck waiting for parent to release baby.
Certified rigid car seats are already onboard and pretty much every airline you've ever flown on has clear guidelines on which seats they can be placed in for exactly that reason.
I think the challenge here might be that, as the article says, this is all just hypothetical and hasn't been empirically tested. It also sounds like a lot of the reasoning predates modern babywearing equipment quite a bit.
With our kids, we used two different devices. One was just a long strip of cloth that you tie in a special way. The other was a more structured carrier with straps and buckles and all that good stuff. For both of them, the child faces toward the parent, so they would be rear-facing relative to the plane. And both have an option to fully support the head. The main purpose there is just to protect their neck while sleeping or during moderate activity, but it would offer at least some additional protection against neck injuries in a crash, rough landing, or during periods of turbulence.
Perhaps crush injuries are more likely that way, but honestly I would be more worried about a parent holding their baby being more likely to drop them in the aisle during an evacuation, which would be more likely to endanger everyone behind them on the plane as well.
I think this is very true. the general consensus from NCPS techs we've talked to is that the most likely fatal injury to a child is spinal - their heads are extremely heavy relative to the rest of their body in infancy so the 'safest' seats tend to be the ones that distribute kinetics away or absorb it (like rear-facing seats where the sudden 'stop' pushes into the seat rather than having the baby's head fly forward)
that said, I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's. something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there. Germany's ADAC is supposedly the gold standard and I can see why - their tests are intensely comprehensive and granular, in the way you'd actually want them to be, and many of the seats rated safe by American standards fail ADAC: https://www.besafe.com/en/safety-tips/tests-awards/adac/
if there were to be a plane-oriented solution, the last place I'd trust it to be taken forward is in the USA especially given how easily corruptible safety-oriented institutions are here
> I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's
How do you define piss poor? The stats show that the US minimum standards still reduce fatal injury risks substantially. And your comparison point for 'rest of the world' is a German automobile club, not a government regulation. Would the better comparison be to ECE R129 for the EU?
> something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there
You know that the information is readily available and you could avoid spreading misinformation with a 10 second search, right?
The US regulation, FMVSS 213/213A, does a frontal crash at 30 mph as well as a side crash test at 30 mph. For apples-to-apples comparison, the EU regulation does a 31 mph frontal crash test and a 19 mph side test. All of the governmental tests are done on a standardized test bench. The German auto club test is 40 mph frontal and 31 mph side, done in a regular car.
There are also organizations in the US that do testing and ranking beyond the regulatory minimums.
I mean, you're right about side crashes but I'm reading that the NHTSA didn't implement this until 2022. and regardless, if all that were true the infant mortality rates per capita from car crashes would prove your point
so what do those stats say vs Germany, Sweden, the EU average? all very easily searchable, no mechanistic theorycrafting required. how does the US fare? certainly not multiple times worse across the board, right?
> if all that were true the infant mortality rates per capita from car crashes would prove your point
Would it? How much of the statistics are attributable to a difference in standards vs the higher average speed and larger average vehicles in the US? Physics is a harsh mistress, both of those factors have a lot of effect on crash energy.
IMO it's not necessarily unreasonable to use standards/evaluations set by a private industry group for this kind of thing.
US automobile safety ratings/improvements over time are largely driven by IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety). It's a private group but is the standard yardstick manufacturers expect to be tested against and fills in a lot of gaps in NHTSA official crash tests.
It wouldn't be strange to see IIIS plus NHTSA criteria used colloquially to describe "US crash standards" when talking about cars even if not fully defined by regulation.
"UL Listed" products or the International Building Code (the base model broadly followed with modifications by each state) are also accepted national standards not set by regulation.
The vast majority of the rest of the world simply doesn't use car seats at all. Even here in the US, in my very multinational city, I only see one demographic that consistently uses car seats at all, regardless of economic status.
> The vast majority of the rest of the world simply doesn't use car seats at all.
I think this apply also outside of "the rest of the world". Nobody bothered to explain that an airbag without a seatbelt can be fatal or that in case of emergency braking the only thing stopping your passenger's movement is the windshield.
I work in child car seat development and I can second that the main issue for our mechanical engineers is preventing neck injuries. Rearward-facing car seats really are a lot better on that front.
ADAC is indeed the main test, but even more difficult than getting a good ADAC score is passing the plus test[1], which focuses on neck spinal forces.
ah yes! I knew I was forgetting something - the NCPS techs we talked to gushed about the AxKid that they had finally gotten imported to the US
I wish the Plus test included detacheable rear-facing seats too. we dropped quite a pretty penny on the Cybex Cloud T because of how well it scored elsewhere
Can you guys produce easy to read installation and cleaning manuals and not something designed by legal department. I think I can handle complex stuff, but car seats are just next level.
> Logically extrapolated, in this scenario, the airline becomes responsible for the baby's wellbeing. And I don't think that's a good place for the airlines to be?
Aren't airlines responsible for the well-being of everyone on a plane? That seems like it kind of goes with the territory of charging money for hurtling people across the sky in a giant metal box.
I think this is ill-phrased, but true. It isn't about being responsible for wellbeing, it is about legal liability in case of accidents.
If you (as the airline) did what the rules where that everybody else follows and the FAA mandates and the baby dies you can argue you did everything correctly and the rules are at fault.
If you however go your own special, non-FAA-approved solution, typically the burden of proof that this special solution is at least up to par with existing certified standards is on you, the airline and if a baby dies it is on you alone to defend that solution.
Meaning from the standpoint of an airline there is not a lot to gain, but much to lose if they do things outside established standards.
This may sound idiotic, but it also prevents other "creative" solutions where airlines sacrifice safety willingly to spend less money.
I don't disagree with that. To me, that implies that there should be better established standards. The parent comment described some of the mechanisms, but stopped short of suggesting that they become standard, which I think is why I was sort of confused.
>This may sound idiotic, but it also prevents other "creative" solutions where airlines sacrifice safety willingly to spend less money.
Everyone loves to say this from the comfort of their arm chair somewhere in an ivory tower but literally every aviation and adjacent workplace has a phrase to the tune of "here we cut stupid corners, cutting smart ones is illegal"
Which is to say, the do-gooders in their infinite wisdom have blocked progress on various axis, some of them the most reasonable ones, because once upon a time someone took it too far and something happened. So all investigation of where to save money, where to find improvement, etc, etc, happens on axis of optimization that are frequently absurd. This is where most of the "creative" solutions you deride come from.
> because once upon a time someone took it too far and something happened.
It's easier to accept red tape once you follow "something happened" down to the idiots who "took it too far". Progress is blocked along the axes your fuckups have access to, end of story.
If you don't like red tape quit playing grab-ass around heavy machinery.
>It's easier to accept red tape once you follow "something happened" down to the idiots who "took it too far". Progress is blocked along the axes your fuckups have access to, end of story. If you don't like red tape quit playing grab-ass around heavy machinery.
<sigh> This is exactly the sort of sneering smugness that makes people rightly hate the safety guy and you are a bad person for as long as you continue to engage in it.
Well I did not say this was a good thing. But if your FAA is the deciding factor and there is something airlines want, the naturally occurring thought would be that airplane manufacturers, airlines and the regulators came together to decide on the future of these regulations, always with the premise that the future should be safer and more comfortable than the present.
And such bodies do exist, e.g. the ARAC (Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee) or specially formed ARCs (Aviation Rulemaking Committees). Whether they are capable of producing the desired innovation or if not, why, I can't tell.
> Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be easy to use or consumer friendly. The ideal solution would have the baby with their back facing front, and the attached carrier facing inwards towards the seat.
There is an existing international standard (ISO 13216) for child safety seats in cars:
> For soft babywearing carriers, the outlook is also grim. The kinematics of the baby, adult, carrier and airplane seat lead to crush injuries that are worse than the poorly restrained arm hold version.
The point is that the "return" - in a vanishingly tiny number of cases, the kinematics is very slightly better (maybe I buy that it is slightly better, without doing research, but it can't possibly be much better) - is not at all worth the "investment" - every single parent of every single baby on every single flight having to put up with a very real annoyance.
Why would it not matter? Everything in safety culture is making the risks acceptable. Why does ETOPS exist when we could just disallow planes with twin-engine aircraft entirely?
The vast majority of airplane incidents with injuries are not a total loss with most people dead.
Hard landings, rough turbulence, runway excursions, etc are far more common and also situations where differences in restraints make meaningful differences in outcomes.
Most airlines offer bassinets for babies. You can only get them in front rows where they get attached to the wall in front of the seats. They’ve got a mesh top that your supposed to keep zipped up while the baby is in there.
Bassinets are only available in the wide-body airplanes, and only a few select domestic US routes are even flying those. And even then, the plane bassinets are tiny, and most infants outgrow them by 6mo. And purely anecdotal observation is that most flights I've been on had way more infants in the cabin than places to install bassinets.
There is an easy and FAA-approved child restraint system called CARES. My wife and I purchased one and used it with great success. The flight attendants had never seen one, so it comes with a card for you to show them.
> a poorly secured rigid baby carrier seat becomes a potentially lethal projectile
Rigid carriers are already permitted on planes, as long as they're FAA approved (which many are). You attach them with the seatbelt, and the flight attendants check.
What I'm proposing in this post is that the FAA not require parents to remove lab infants from babywearing carriers.
From the comments here, many people don’t get the difference. If you’ve never flown with a kid, there is a nuance that is easy to miss.
I was going to make a comment earlier about how my kids travelled in car seats years ago before I realized you were talking about lap kids without their own seat.
I'm surprised at the amount of people here confusing carriers with car seats. It seemed obvious enough to me in the article. It's about wearing babies on the plane, not babies sitting in their own seat.
There indeed seem to be a lot of folks commenting who think being able to safely have a car seat on a plane would be a revolutionary change, when that's the part that's a solved problem.
It isn't that surprising given that hackernews tends to skew tin demographics towards young men. And people who don't read articles but have strong opinions on everything.
I don't think that's actually what the FAA has reasoned.
FAA calls all of these devices, in general, child restraint systems. Rigid seats with harnesses are allowed under FAA rules. The real consideration is blocked egress, since a large, rigid device strapped to a seat could actually make egress more challenging. That is covered in a more subjective advisory circular, which allows airlines to make policy, e.g., it may only be used at a window seat of a non-exit row.
Since FAA just this month has decided to start enforcing a 1992 rule requiring even so much as a paper cup to be stowed before pushback citing the egress concern, we might even expect some new policy on this.
Can you explain your reasoning why is that the case with carrier seats but not with <literally_every_other_hard_object> including human bodies and their skulls which are way sturdier than plastic moldings?
Can you link your kinematics? Modern science is much closer to the priests of old. Academics leverage their credentials to present untested predictions as science. Their ideas are considered correct because of their expertise and the institutions they belong to, not because the ideas have been thoroughly tested.
If you have lethal babies and/or lethal rigid carriers flying around an airplane in a crash, I think you've got a severe enough crash that most of these arguments are picking bellybutton lint. I'd vastly prefer the FAA focus on the rulemaking around ensuring that I'm not in such a crash than worry about what happens if I'm in such a crash. The chances that I get into an accident which is severe enough that I get killed by a flying baby, but I would have otherwise survived, are exceptionally low.
A heavy rigid object can cause injury in regular turbulence. No crash needed. That would be the danger I’d want tested for. And unless the person bringing the carrier is expected to be liable when their carrier injures someone, it winds up being another liability for the airlines.
That solution already exists actually. You buy a ticket/seat for the infant and use an FAA approved carrier. For example, the nuna pipa rx is FAA approved for this use.
It's not a popular choice because you have to pay full price for the seat, so lap-carrying the baby can save quite a bit of money. Once the baby is 2, you can no longer lap carry them, so that option goes away. There's FAA approved options for small children for whom the lap belt would be inappropriate that are different from the infant seats.
I would settle for being allowed to use something like the CARES universally which is currently a total crapshoot. Even car seats are still a challenge if traveling internationally. We’re advised to do all this stuff to keep our kids safe but the airlines and plane manufacturers and fitters don’t really do anything to support it globally. In a couple days I get to carry a car seat around Europe because the airline won’t let me use anything else.
It’s like a front backpack where the baby is facing the wearer and is supported up to the neck. Something like this https://share.google/cGaL54ZtqoxDq18zv
This never happened to me when I had babies, thank god, but I would almost certainly have politely said "no" to this request. It isn't very fair to the flight attendant who is just trying to do their job, to force them to figure out how to handle an uncooperative parent with a sleeping baby, but IMO it's a very reasonable battle to pick. I think essentially every flight attendant would just let it go.
> I think essentially every flight attendant would just let it go.
I predict they will not let it go, and it will escalate to escorting you off the plane. It's a violation of federal law to allow you to keep your child strapped in, and the attendant risks losing their job.
Maybe you're right, but I'm skeptical. I've forgotten to buckle my seat belt plenty of times and nobody is standing there to make sure I do it or escorting me off the plane if I don't.
Just be very careful with this. Flight attendants have the force of law behind them and you never know when they'll decide the right way to handle an uncooperative passenger is to have police meet the plane when you land.
I mean that would certainly suck, but if I'm actually out of line, then having the cops meet me is the right move, and if not, I really think prosecutors have better things to do than prosecuting evil baby holders.
If they do then I hope there is an additional rule forcing the guardian to purchase an adjacent seat, so there's no risk of someone (me) being guilt tripped into swapping seats.
This sounds like a different problem than the one this post is about. For baby-in-lap, no one is being guilt tripped into switching seats because the baby doesn’t have a seat.
If you’re being guilt tripped into switching seats so that a family with a young child can sit together, consider blaming the airline for not automatically seating a young child next to their guardian.
It’s absolutely a trick to get travelers to pay extra, but I can grudgingly accept the nickel and diming when my party consists of adults. When one of the members of my party is a literal 3 year old, it becomes ridiculous.
I prefer the Fran Lebowitz suggestion : a separate plane with no seats for children, they can float round the whole trip from takeoff to landing. also let's option the adult plane with opening windows so we can smoke again.
As a parent of 3 kids and an extensive baby-carrier user, I see your argument but I think you're lacking consideration of the failure modes.
Yes, almost every baby carrier would likely restrain the infant better than add-on infant belt if the adult lap belt rides up over the infant carrier, the infant's going to be crushed between the adult and the belt. Not a good outcome.
Thus you're likely going to need FAA-approved infant carriers, same way as you'd need FAA-approved car seats you can take on planes.
I dunno, I flew UK-IRL this summer and in both directions I just threaded the baby-belt (standard issue here, the cabin crew hand them out before the safety briefing) around the carrier and the sleeping baby.
In a full on crash situation infants are not going to do well, so optimising for much more likely turbulence injuries (for which having the baby strapped as securely as possible is definitely a good idea!) seems more important.
It's been awhile since I used one so maybe I'm misremembering, but isn't the brace position for a lap infant basically the same as what a rear facing soft baby carrier does naturally?
It seems strange to disallow the carrier, have the belt that loops through the adult belt but then if the plane is going down you have to get them into the same position they'll be in in the carrier anyway!
Relatedly, I wish I could bring my electric wheelchair with me in the cabin. I went on a work trip to Paris in April and sitting in a regular seat was just as uncomfortable as I remember. Fortunately, halfway through the first flight one of the attendants noticed my caregiver frequently repositioning me and had the other person in our row move elsewhere so that I could lie down across two seats. American Airlines allowed me to do that on the return flight as well.
I was quite worried that my wheelchair would break in some way like I've experienced several times before but everything went quite smoothly! AI helped tremendously with planning, e.g. here's Claude: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/6c977d23-1b7c-4a00-a7aa-d...
Oh no, you have to take your baby out and hold it during all the times when you have to have everything stowed and can't do much of anything else anyway, whatever shall we do, won't someone think of the children? This is a non-issue, and not worthy of a blog post.
> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead. Since driving is far less safe than flying, a ban would lead to more deaths. I'd love to see more of this "all things considered" thinking around bans.
In terms of CO2e, a familiy of 2 + a kid driving a car instead of flying results in quite a bit of less emissions. Depending on the assumed mortality per tonne CO2e, driving might lead to a lot less deaths.
This is of course quite unreliable data, but one example of just to say how "all things considered" is very hard and almost always still comes down to a judgement call.
I think what’s better is modular seats. The interior of the airplane is empty with harnesses all over the floor, and based on the passengers the seats get customized. A baby? A carrier seat is put there. Disabled? They can use their own as long as it fulfills the specs. Fat person? Combo seat. Someone wants to sleep? A bed-like is added, and so on. Plus the arrangement inside can be easily reshaped for best experience
> A lap-belt restrained adult dummy in an aircraft seat, with an infant dummy in a carrier, was subjected to a 9G dynamic sled test. The severity of the pulse was based on the results of a static load test. The commercially available infant carriers tested were not able to restrain infants under crash situations.
The missing comparison is to a parent holding the baby in their arms, which I expect would also fail a 9G test. We're not making babies safer by requiring parents to take them out of babywearing carriers.
I think this is a way that airlines and the FFA could continue to grow in consideration. At some point the economics of flying with children starts to make less and less sense. I just flew with a toddler that was under 2 from the mainland US to Hawaii and back. The toddler is just under 2 so he was considered a lap child to fly free. However at 2 the child for most airlines graduates to a full price ticket. At that point it seems less and less likely for families to want to fly over driving. Then add more children you are spending something of a small fortune to fly anywhere. It seems like the airlines could capture more business if they could price into their model a discounted ticket for children older than 2 but under a certain age (ie. 13 or 10).
But why? They weigh slightly less, but take up a seat. Why should a child be subsidized. Planes are typically full or close to full. The airline doesn't really care what age the butt is in the seat, just that it's a revenue passenger.
Yeah, and as someone who just travelled with three young kids I don’t think my party cost the airline less than our number of seats, probably a lot more.
Kids are already subsidized with free gate checking of strollers (to be fair, so are other things like skis on Alaska).
You all have some fair points. I was thinking about it as more of a business opportunity for the airlines to attract more families to fly over driving. As I said before the economics start to become more prohibitive to fly vs driving the more passengers. Its not unreasonable to think this way. Airlines give out other incentives for loyalty or just generally having enough airline points. Why not like family packages to attract families that wouldn't otherwise go to get more business
Flying from US to Europe we ended up paying charges roughly equivalent to 1/4 the price of the adult ticket for a lap infant. Now he’s 2 we pay about 2/3rds the adult ticket price until he’s 12 and get a seat and a cabin baggage allowance so it ends up not very different to paying for one checked bag and lap infant.
I have a unique perspective on this as a former federal rulemaker. One thing you should know is that when it comes to rulemaking, the FAA isn't an ordinary rulemaker--they do the most of it and they're the best in the business. When I went to my intro to rule making classes, the FAA always rolled deep.
If you want a change and you want to make sure the right people see your request, I suggest you start here:
They do when appropriate after considering all concerns. The NTSB is solely concerned with safety. The best rulemaking is not literally safety-first or nothing would actually get done.
As a student pilot, I got confused by a sign in the aeronautical charts, and wrote to the faa.
I got to present in front of the aeronautical charting group, they discussed, and took up my change. It was a surreal experience. The level of depth, care, and just breadth of considerations to flip every possible stone to make flying infinitessimally safer was truly awe inspiring. The fact that me, a at-the-time-not-yet-even private pilot, was heard and taken super seriously, was equally amazing. Fully agree -- these people are the best in the biz.
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[ 10.7 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadI suspect it leads to more people not travelling at all (or much shorter distances) and net saves lives in both the relatively immediate travel sense and even moreso in the broader analysis including net carbon emissions and their effect in climate change.
(It is still a mix of corrupt corporatism and authoritarian conditioning that should be ended for that reason.)
In Europe (and the US Northeast Corridor), I do favor trains to avoid going to and dealing with airports, but they're no panacea either. And I say this as someone with the various passes that make flying easier.
Honestly, it would be faster and possibly cheaper for me to drive to Manhattan than take the train--in which case security doesn't enter in at all. And certainly for two people. But I hate driving into Manhattan.
Were I amenable, which I'm generally not, could probably drive 4 hours from my house into the city. (Almost always take the train.)
It is what it is. Governments can't risk the bad publicity of a terrorist attack. A car accident doesn't even make the news.
Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.
There's at least some element of Chesterton's fence that could come into play here.
The period where hijackings were “common” (an exaggeration even then) ended around the time the first airline security screening requirements were adopted, about 30 years before 9/11 and (and just a little bit before I was born, and I am in my 50s.)
Airline bombings were NEVER common in the US (there are three I can find reference to, the most recent in 1962 and the others in 1933 and 1955.) They have been more of an issue internationally, but obviously US screening rules have done fuck-all about that, and they have continued.
For example: Spokane to Seattle is about 230 miles in a straight line, or 280 miles driving. A flight takes less than an hour (not even 40 minutes of which is spent in the air) and costs $80-130 one way. A train traveling 200mph nonstop would take 1 hour 24 minutes. Building high speed rail costs $20-$200 million per mile (the upper end of that is California HSR). If we optimistically assume $20m/mile, constructing the line will cost $5.6b. If all SEA-GEG passengers (677k per year) choose to take rail instead of flying, and we want the project to pay for itself after 50 years, then each ticket will need to cost $165. This also assumes no cost to maintain or operate the rail line.
I wonder if we could not get most of the benefit by doing substantially cheaper options like separating freight from rail on major routes, electrifying parts of it where feasible. And maybe taking specific segments in areas where the track conditions are already favorable and increasing the maximum speeds on those segments. Probably two-thirds of the route between Portland and Salem, for example, is already suitable with modest upgrades to hit 125 mph. And basically all modern trains are capable of that speed already.
whyfor? I guess I don't know how I would price "get there faster" in a reasonable way.
> separating freight from rail on major routes
that does seem to often be the limiter in North American passenger rail, but I don't know how economically feasabile it is to separate the two. I assume railroads are moderately expensive to maintain.
I had two recent trips to the same destination. I drove once because it was so much cheaper (during the world cup when air fare was jacked up) compared to the train or flying. I flew the other time, because it was only a little more expensive and flying is faster and less of a hassle, actually.
Additionally, given the article talks about families, the cost comes down a lot with multiple people in one car vs multiple plane tickets. If we want to make travel safer by putting fewer cars on the road, make alternatives cheaper. They're already more convenient to me...
Is this really why the rule was made? Did they really have safety of driving in mind or is this just in the interest of the profits of airlines?
It seems like if they really had safety in mind there are better solutions:
* Subsidize the 2nd seat for parents with children from tax dollars
* Criminalize many intentional driving violations
* Build high speed rail
Yes. There are multiple public documents showing this, ex:
> The FAA has determined it is not appropriate to mandate the use of CRSs in aircraft now. We remain concerned that if we require children under 2 years old to be in an approved restraint system (which requires a passenger seat), affected operators might find it necessary to charge a fare for transporting these children. (Currently most, if not all, operators do not charge a fare for children under 2 years old who are held in an adult's lap.) In turn, for economic reasons some adults might decide to drive in automobiles to their destinations rather than fly. The FAA is concerned because automobile injury and fatality rates are higher than aircraft injury and fatality rates. As a result, there would be a net increase in transportation injuries and fatalities as families opt, for economic reasons, to drive rather than fly to their destinations.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2005/08/26/05-1678...
> * Subsidize the 2nd seat for parents with children from tax dollars
That's not something the FAA or DOT can do.
> * Criminalize many intentional driving violations
That's not something the FAA or DOT can do.
> * Build high speed rail
That's not something the FAA or DOT (unilaterally) can do.
I mean, the head of the FAA and the head of the DOT can have a coffee chat with the president and get an executive order then? Anything is possible to do, apparently.
If the adult is pitched forward with the child strapped to their chest (facing inward) then they risk bending the child’s spine backwards.
PFAS bans are another where the whole class is likely hazardous but EPA will continue chasing specific molecules rather than consider the whole class.
Now adays, chem engineering will just put different monomers in and move on untill 20 years and we find, all things considered, it still reaches humans at toxic levels.
But that’s it: we don’t do other flights with the kids
See this is what has bugged me so much about how common anti-natalism has become. It has become diluted but present everywhere.
Children are a part of our society. They are a part of your community. They are going to be around you, they are going to be where you don’t want them to be, they are just going to be present in general. And this can’t possibly be a safety argument, as planes I believe are the safest mode of transportation. If you’re worried about safety, then kids should never get in cars, which is also completely unfeasible.
So if it’s not about safety, then what is this really about?
I have encountered this many times flying so it’s not “no one”. It’s usually younger couples who either don’t know what they are getting into or just have the energy to deal with it.
On international flights from the US it’s common to hear the reason is to bring the baby to see extended family.
there is literally no such thing.
its like people who say that parental leave is a vacation. wildly miss informed and completely tone def.
small kids are always lots of work and this its pretty hard to have a vacation.
i agree that visiting fam is the best, partly bc they will help with the kids :)
The expression means that X is the best of unpalatable options to accomplish something else, where X is taken in a literal and narrow sense.
People don’t fly with babies for fun. They do it because visiting grandparents is fun, and driving isn’t a good option.
Yes. That is exactly how it’s supposed to be used. The vast majority of people do not enjoy the airport/airline experience and were there any other reasonable way to get where they are going they would probably take it. They are not doing it because it is fun, they are doing it because they have to.
Much harder to keep them entertained them at home lol.
“What is so important that you need to take a baby on a plane” and “Have you thought about driving instead?” have got to be some of the most clueless and unempathic takes I’ve ever read. Ironic considering that’s what you’re accusing parents of.
I would guess that in most cases, someone is flying with an infant because they are going somewhere important and traveling with their infant was the best option available to them.
Traveling by air (or at all) with an infant is not fun and I can’t imagine that ever being anyone’s first choice.
So when you see frazzled parents at the airport with their young children, assume the best and be kind.
We have child-free hotels, child-free restaurantes, maybe now child-free airplanes...what's next, child-free cities?
She slept like a baby for most of the 5 hour flight and only cried once for maybe 60 seconds when she got hungry and I had to prep a bottle.
It definitely didn't seem like "babies experience a lot of pain" holds true at all if you plan for it
I don't think you should have to turn off your phone when flying. If I remember correctly the evidence for it is quite weak. Maybe it's still the same argument, lets consider all the variables.
For soft babywearing carriers, the outlook is also grim. The kinematics of the baby, adult, carrier and airplane seat lead to crush injuries that are worse than the poorly restrained arm hold version.
Could there be a solution here that straps around a seat to give babies a safe seat?
Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be easy to use or consumer friendly. The ideal solution would have the baby with their back facing front, and the attached carrier facing inwards towards the seat. It would have to be carefully specced and tested so no unverified, third-party seats... Logically extrapolated, in this scenario, the airline becomes responsible for the baby's wellbeing. And I don't think that's a good place for the airlines to be?
Currently, aircraft seatbelts are designed for very quick release when needed with no training or muscle memory needed, shove your hand at your waist and pull the metal flap and it immediately comes apart. This seems like it could be an issue with baby carriers, since a) you can probably expect a bit more complex arrangement of straps buckles and b) lack of muscle memory or training on presumably a different style of carrier than what you ever ever use outside an airplane.
A second issue that comes to mind, how to do seating arrangements? Imagine a parent struggling to remove baby during a emergency. Imagine a 3 seat row window side, where others are stuck waiting for parent to release baby.
This seems like a certification nightmare
With our kids, we used two different devices. One was just a long strip of cloth that you tie in a special way. The other was a more structured carrier with straps and buckles and all that good stuff. For both of them, the child faces toward the parent, so they would be rear-facing relative to the plane. And both have an option to fully support the head. The main purpose there is just to protect their neck while sleeping or during moderate activity, but it would offer at least some additional protection against neck injuries in a crash, rough landing, or during periods of turbulence.
Perhaps crush injuries are more likely that way, but honestly I would be more worried about a parent holding their baby being more likely to drop them in the aisle during an evacuation, which would be more likely to endanger everyone behind them on the plane as well.
that said, I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's. something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there. Germany's ADAC is supposedly the gold standard and I can see why - their tests are intensely comprehensive and granular, in the way you'd actually want them to be, and many of the seats rated safe by American standards fail ADAC: https://www.besafe.com/en/safety-tips/tests-awards/adac/
if there were to be a plane-oriented solution, the last place I'd trust it to be taken forward is in the USA especially given how easily corruptible safety-oriented institutions are here
How do you define piss poor? The stats show that the US minimum standards still reduce fatal injury risks substantially. And your comparison point for 'rest of the world' is a German automobile club, not a government regulation. Would the better comparison be to ECE R129 for the EU?
> something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there
You know that the information is readily available and you could avoid spreading misinformation with a 10 second search, right?
The US regulation, FMVSS 213/213A, does a frontal crash at 30 mph as well as a side crash test at 30 mph. For apples-to-apples comparison, the EU regulation does a 31 mph frontal crash test and a 19 mph side test. All of the governmental tests are done on a standardized test bench. The German auto club test is 40 mph frontal and 31 mph side, done in a regular car.
There are also organizations in the US that do testing and ranking beyond the regulatory minimums.
so what do those stats say vs Germany, Sweden, the EU average? all very easily searchable, no mechanistic theorycrafting required. how does the US fare? certainly not multiple times worse across the board, right?
Would it? How much of the statistics are attributable to a difference in standards vs the higher average speed and larger average vehicles in the US? Physics is a harsh mistress, both of those factors have a lot of effect on crash energy.
US automobile safety ratings/improvements over time are largely driven by IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety). It's a private group but is the standard yardstick manufacturers expect to be tested against and fills in a lot of gaps in NHTSA official crash tests.
It wouldn't be strange to see IIIS plus NHTSA criteria used colloquially to describe "US crash standards" when talking about cars even if not fully defined by regulation.
"UL Listed" products or the International Building Code (the base model broadly followed with modifications by each state) are also accepted national standards not set by regulation.
I wouldn't want a third kid just because I don't want to deal with carseats anymore.
By the time you had your third, would the oldest still even be in a carseat?
But even then, three car seats is doable even in small cars: https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats
You can buy special car seats that can fit 3 across even in the smallest cars of Europe.
I think this apply also outside of "the rest of the world". Nobody bothered to explain that an airbag without a seatbelt can be fatal or that in case of emergency braking the only thing stopping your passenger's movement is the windshield.
ADAC is indeed the main test, but even more difficult than getting a good ADAC score is passing the plus test[1], which focuses on neck spinal forces.
[1]: https://www.vti.se/en/services/laboratory-and-testing/crash-...
I wish the Plus test included detacheable rear-facing seats too. we dropped quite a pretty penny on the Cybex Cloud T because of how well it scored elsewhere
Aren't airlines responsible for the well-being of everyone on a plane? That seems like it kind of goes with the territory of charging money for hurtling people across the sky in a giant metal box.
If you (as the airline) did what the rules where that everybody else follows and the FAA mandates and the baby dies you can argue you did everything correctly and the rules are at fault.
If you however go your own special, non-FAA-approved solution, typically the burden of proof that this special solution is at least up to par with existing certified standards is on you, the airline and if a baby dies it is on you alone to defend that solution.
Meaning from the standpoint of an airline there is not a lot to gain, but much to lose if they do things outside established standards.
This may sound idiotic, but it also prevents other "creative" solutions where airlines sacrifice safety willingly to spend less money.
Everyone loves to say this from the comfort of their arm chair somewhere in an ivory tower but literally every aviation and adjacent workplace has a phrase to the tune of "here we cut stupid corners, cutting smart ones is illegal"
Which is to say, the do-gooders in their infinite wisdom have blocked progress on various axis, some of them the most reasonable ones, because once upon a time someone took it too far and something happened. So all investigation of where to save money, where to find improvement, etc, etc, happens on axis of optimization that are frequently absurd. This is where most of the "creative" solutions you deride come from.
It's easier to accept red tape once you follow "something happened" down to the idiots who "took it too far". Progress is blocked along the axes your fuckups have access to, end of story.
If you don't like red tape quit playing grab-ass around heavy machinery.
<sigh> This is exactly the sort of sneering smugness that makes people rightly hate the safety guy and you are a bad person for as long as you continue to engage in it.
And such bodies do exist, e.g. the ARAC (Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee) or specially formed ARCs (Aviation Rulemaking Committees). Whether they are capable of producing the desired innovation or if not, why, I can't tell.
There is an existing international standard (ISO 13216) for child safety seats in cars:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isofix
It could be added to airplanes seats.
But I don't buy it: https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats
The point is that the "return" - in a vanishingly tiny number of cases, the kinematics is very slightly better (maybe I buy that it is slightly better, without doing research, but it can't possibly be much better) - is not at all worth the "investment" - every single parent of every single baby on every single flight having to put up with a very real annoyance.
you'll be dead so it won't matter much.
Hard landings, rough turbulence, runway excursions, etc are far more common and also situations where differences in restraints make meaningful differences in outcomes.
I only ever heard/said this. Seeing it in print, I suddenly realize it must be "worse comes to worst"
https://www.amsafe.com/kidsflysafe-com/
Rigid carriers are already permitted on planes, as long as they're FAA approved (which many are). You attach them with the seatbelt, and the flight attendants check.
What I'm proposing in this post is that the FAA not require parents to remove lab infants from babywearing carriers.
I was going to make a comment earlier about how my kids travelled in car seats years ago before I realized you were talking about lap kids without their own seat.
FAA calls all of these devices, in general, child restraint systems. Rigid seats with harnesses are allowed under FAA rules. The real consideration is blocked egress, since a large, rigid device strapped to a seat could actually make egress more challenging. That is covered in a more subjective advisory circular, which allows airlines to make policy, e.g., it may only be used at a window seat of a non-exit row.
Since FAA just this month has decided to start enforcing a 1992 rule requiring even so much as a paper cup to be stowed before pushback citing the egress concern, we might even expect some new policy on this.
Too smaht for me to understand.
Can you explain your reasoning why is that the case with carrier seats but not with <literally_every_other_hard_object> including human bodies and their skulls which are way sturdier than plastic moldings?
This is religion, not science.
No it doesn't.
It's not a popular choice because you have to pay full price for the seat, so lap-carrying the baby can save quite a bit of money. Once the baby is 2, you can no longer lap carry them, so that option goes away. There's FAA approved options for small children for whom the lap belt would be inappropriate that are different from the infant seats.
I predict they will not let it go, and it will escalate to escorting you off the plane. It's a violation of federal law to allow you to keep your child strapped in, and the attendant risks losing their job.
If you’re being guilt tripped into switching seats so that a family with a young child can sit together, consider blaming the airline for not automatically seating a young child next to their guardian.
here's the /s for those of you who are tonedeaf.
Yes, almost every baby carrier would likely restrain the infant better than add-on infant belt if the adult lap belt rides up over the infant carrier, the infant's going to be crushed between the adult and the belt. Not a good outcome.
Thus you're likely going to need FAA-approved infant carriers, same way as you'd need FAA-approved car seats you can take on planes.
In a full on crash situation infants are not going to do well, so optimising for much more likely turbulence injuries (for which having the baby strapped as securely as possible is definitely a good idea!) seems more important.
It seems strange to disallow the carrier, have the belt that loops through the adult belt but then if the plane is going down you have to get them into the same position they'll be in in the carrier anyway!
I was quite worried that my wheelchair would break in some way like I've experienced several times before but everything went quite smoothly! AI helped tremendously with planning, e.g. here's Claude: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/6c977d23-1b7c-4a00-a7aa-d...
In terms of CO2e, a familiy of 2 + a kid driving a car instead of flying results in quite a bit of less emissions. Depending on the assumed mortality per tonne CO2e, driving might lead to a lot less deaths.
This is of course quite unreliable data, but one example of just to say how "all things considered" is very hard and almost always still comes down to a judgement call.
> A lap-belt restrained adult dummy in an aircraft seat, with an infant dummy in a carrier, was subjected to a 9G dynamic sled test. The severity of the pulse was based on the results of a static load test. The commercially available infant carriers tested were not able to restrain infants under crash situations.
https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/research-and-analysis-r...
Kids are already subsidized with free gate checking of strollers (to be fair, so are other things like skis on Alaska).
If you want a change and you want to make sure the right people see your request, I suggest you start here:
https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/petitions
I got to present in front of the aeronautical charting group, they discussed, and took up my change. It was a surreal experience. The level of depth, care, and just breadth of considerations to flip every possible stone to make flying infinitessimally safer was truly awe inspiring. The fact that me, a at-the-time-not-yet-even private pilot, was heard and taken super seriously, was equally amazing. Fully agree -- these people are the best in the biz.
That would make my flying a bit nicer.