Why Does the United States Ban Extension Seatbelts For Securing Infants On Airplanes When the Rest of the World Requires It?

Crew Insider is our series of informative articles that answer some of the most common and less common questions about the aviation industry from the point of view of an industry insider. Our question answerer-in-chief is Mateusz Maszczynski, who has worked in the airline industry for nearly two decades and has honed his expertise in the field through this blog since 2015.

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Parents traveling with infants under the age of two in many parts of the world will be very familiar with a safety rule that aviation authorities impose on airlines requiring parents to secure their child in their lap using a second seatbelt that attaches to the parent or guardian’s seatbelt.

There is, however, one very significant country that specifically prohibits this method of securing an infant in the parents lap – the United States.

In fact, parents traveling with little ones in the United States might not even be aware of the extension seatbelt rule in other countries, and it can come as a surprise when US passengers travel on a foreign airline only for the flight attendants to present them with an extender seatbelt.

These seatbelts are slightly different from normal extension seatbelts because they have a small loop on the main part of the seatbelt, which attaches to the fixed seatbelt. The parent then secures their seatbelt around themselves, and the extension seatbelt secures around their infant.

In the event of an emergency, the idea is that the parent just unfastens their seatbelt, and then the loop comes off so that an evacuation is impeded or slowed down by needing to unfasten two seatbelts.

Extension seatbelts are, without doubt, an imperfect solution to how best to secure infants during taxi, takeoff, landing, and turbulence.

In an ideal world, parents would be able to secure their infant in an approved car seat that attaches to the child’s own seat, but that would, of course, require them to buy the infant their own seat.

Some parents do swallow this extra expense, but airlines and aviation authorities allow infants under the age of two to fly for free or a nominal fee if they are a ‘lap infant’ so most parents go for the cheapest option.

In the United States, the Federal Aviation Authority would also prefer parents to buy an extra seat for their child, but when they don’t, the US authorities have a very different take on the safest way of securing a child in the parent’s lap.

Research conducted by the FAA, the latest of which dates back to 2015, concluded that rather than enhancing safety, infant extension seatbelts could actually put the child at more risk.

We reached out to the FAA for their latest take on this subject, and a spokesperson explained: “Extensive FAA testing showed that most harness vests [such as an infant extension seatbelt] fail to protect the child and can result in the child being crushed by the adult’s weight if sudden braking or impact occurs.”

“The type of physical harm that children in harnesses attached to an adult could experience has not changed since the agency conducted those tests,” the statement from the FAA continued.

Now, it gets more complicated in that the FAA testing and regulations only apply to takeoff and landing so during the cruise phase, a harness or infant extension seatbelt could potentially be used by parents to mitigate the risk of an infant being injured during turbulence.

However, while the FAA doesn’t specifically ban harness-style restraint systems during the cruise portion of a flight, US airlines have largely applied the same ban throughout a flight… Which then, of course, precludes them from even carrying the loop-style infant extension seatbelts that are such a common sight on most foreign carriers.

Given that aviation safety regulations can be so similar around the world because they are based on shared best practices, the infant extension seatbelt issue is a pretty stark difference in policy.

This can get really interesting when US-based passengers then fly on a foreign airline only to be told to do something that their own government is telling them is potentially dangerous.

To avoid this confusion, the FAA recommends: “The safest place for a child under age two is an approved child-restraint system or device, not an adult’s lap.”