Gareth Edmondson-Jones,
JetBlue's Vice President of Corporate Communications, confirmed
to ANN that JetBlue may become the first major airline to
offer car-style child seats, on its fleet of A320s.
The FAA has apparently been shopping the idea around, but has
met with industry resistance, no doubt exacerbated by recent record
load factors.
JetBlue, though, is working with car-seat-maker Amsafe, to find
that proper combination of safety and efficiency.
It has long been public wisdom that children in adult-sized car
seats are not as protected as other little kids, in
properly-designed and -anchored child restraint seat systems.
Whether there would be a statistically-verifiable improvement,
using similar technology in airliners, may still be a matter for
debate (would a statistically-significant number of tiny people in
safety seats out-survive an identical group of non-safety-seated
kids, given the nature of airline crashes?). However, there is no
doubt that the marketing effect of a "caring" image would be a
plus.
There is always the more-obvious benefit of knowing that your
toddler won't be squirming free of the adult-size seatbelt, just as
the 'liner hits turbulence, or as that hot coffee is being passed
to the lady in the window seat...
The big problem
(outside the obvious scientific question) has always been that such
seats are bulky, and with carry-on space so limited, and so many
seats full -- would the public (especially the primo business
travelers) stand for the added inconvenience?
While it's OK with the FAA to bring, and use, car seats for your
kids on airliners (and it's still recommended for infants),
Amsafe's solution to the problem -- at least for kids who weigh
from about 20 to 45 pounds -- is to add a webbed harness to
the existing seatbelt system. The harness doesn't greatly restrict
the child's mobility, except that it keeps the little darling
properly-oriented in the seat; and it also will hold your child
back, better than a single adult belt, in the event of rapid
deceleration. The webbing folds up small, too -- about the size of
a softball, so it's a lot more space-efficient than the
traditional, hard child seats from our cars.
Amsafe debuted the system in June; since then, it's been working
with the FAA to get it approved. JetBlue's spokewsoman, Fiona
Morrison, told ANN that they're not sure when approval will come.
The airline, she said, is still working out the logistics: "We're
not certain yet whether we'll just have them on board, or whether
passengers will reserve them with their tickets," she said.
Catch-22 for some airlines, but not for JetBlue
Can an airline start offering the safety devices on the
premise that the old way of doing things was less-safe, and still
avoid civil suits for past fatalities? JetBlue may be the ideal
launch customer, if that's the case: they've never had any
passenger fatalities. Additionally, those demanding business
travelers are a smaller demographic at JetBlue than at the older,
premium airlines. Now... what will the competition do?