Jet Seats Urged for Flying Babies : Air Advisory Panel Calls Mothers’ Laps Unsafe in Crashes

WASHINGTON —  The National Transportation Safety Board recommended today that children now flying free in parents’ arms be required to sit in separate safety seats on airliners.

“All objects must be secured during takeoff and landing, including coffeepots and luggage,” said board Chairman James L. Kolstad. “And yet infants, our precious children, are not.”

The proposal, approved 4 to 0 by the board, does not deal with who will provide the seats or whether children will pay fares. But if such a regulation takes effect, airlines are expected to require that parents generally lug along an infant seat--like those required in cars--and buy a ticket if they want to be guaranteed passage for the child.

When planes aren’t full, the airlines are expected to continue to let infants fly at no charge.

The recommendation now goes to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has resisted a mandatory rule on the grounds that the 5,000 to 10,000 youngsters under 2 years old who fly in adults’ laps each day are not at great risk. The FAA is not required to follow NTSB recommendations and sometimes doesn’t.

Asked after the vote if the possible increased cost for travelers could be justified, Kolstad said, “I don’t think the cost of protecting an infant’s life is too much to ask.”

He said the practice of allowing infants to fly in parents’ laps is “a hole in the law . . . an oversight we think needs to be corrected.”

Under the NTSB proposal, parents who arrive at the gate of a fully booked flight with an unticketed baby would not be allowed to take the child aboard. They also could be denied passage with any small child, with or without ticket, if they are not carrying an approved car seat.

The FAA has said it will consider mandatory restraints but has proposed only to require that airlines allow seats on board if passengers chose to use them--a practice now followed by most airlines.

The airline industry, the flight attendants union, consumer safety groups and some members of Congress all have called for mandatory restraints.

Some travel agents are among opponents of the measure who say it would add to the cost of flying for young families and possibly force them to travel by automobile on shorter routes. They say automobile travel poses greater risks per mile than flying.

A Harvard Medical School statistical study in the early 1980s theorized that three infants might be saved over five years if all children used safety seats on airliners.

But two recent crashes in which unrestrained infants were killed have led to more support for mandatory restraints. Two of the five unsecured children aboard United Flight 232 that crashed in Iowa last July died, and at least one unseated child was killed aboard the Avianca airliner that crashed in New York in January.

The NTSB proposal would prevent children under 40 inches or 40 pounds from flying without car seats approved for airliner use.

The safety board proposal, in focusing on size and weight of the child rather than age, could also lead to required seats for small children older than 2 who are now allowed to use ordinary seat belts, board senior investigator Nora Marshall said.