CARES FAA approved safety harness

[happymom52003]

Just wanted to say we used this http://www.kidsflysafe.com/ on our recent trip for our daughter and we loved it. It was very easy to install assuming you've read the instructions (if you try to intall it without reading them, you won't have much luck!).

It was SOOOO much easier than lugging her car seat onto the plane. We still needed a car seat since we rented a car while there, so we just rented one from the car rental agency and it was fine.

It is a bit pricey ($75), but if you plan on flying multiple times I think it is well worth it. It will be awhile before our daughter reaches the weight limit (44 pounds), so we will be using it alot more in the future.

 

[Gig 'Em Mickey]

Guess that's a good idea, but we would never trust a rental car seat so we just bring ours with us. Even though it's a huge pain to lug around, we feel safer with ours.

 

[ErickainPA]

We used CARES on our trip in July to Seattle, it was nice. Although my almost 2 yr old had found that he could just pull up on the planes belt latch and undo himself.

We are flying Saturday but we didn't get a chance to borrow the CARES from a friend as they are using it, so we are taking his carseat. We need it for the rental anyway and it's pretty lightweight.

It is nice to have the CARES harness though

 

[KC82271]

Only issue I had with it was they could so easily slip out of it, as there was no between the leg strap. My daughter (3) figured this out and the belt became useless. I took it again on this last trip (3.5 yo) and she told me "don't bother" she would just use the lap belt - and ended up doing the belt herself. So I gave up and didn't even hook it up on the return.

If you start them young, it would be a great piece. Unfortunately, DD was a bit too smart for it.

It's a great invention though.

 

[happymom52003]

Only issue I had with it was they could so easily slip out of it, as there was no between the leg strap. My daughter (3) figured this out and the belt became useless. I took it again on this last trip (3.5 yo) and she told me "don't bother" she would just use the lap belt - and ended up doing the belt herself. So I gave up and didn't even hook it up on the return.

If you start them young, it would be a great piece. Unfortunately, DD was a bit too smart for it.

It's a great invention though.

I should note that the CARES is not meant to restrain a child in their seat. It is kind of like the equilavence of a car booster seat. It just makes the regular seat belt safer for kids under a certain weight. These kids can be lifted out of an airplane seatbelt in severe turbulence (not just your everyday turbulence of course....but the severe kind that will send unbelted people to the ceiling of the plane....it is rare, but it happens). The five point harness on the Cares keeps this from happening. A leg strap is not needed because the danger is in the child coming up out of the seat belt in severe turbulance, not down.

My DD is just over 3 1/2. Just a year ago, we would have never been able to use the CARES with her because it would have been a constant battle to keep her from unbuckling the seat belt.....so the car seat worked best for her up until recently. But she is at an age now where that is not a problem, so from this point onward the Cares will work best.

I actually think Cares would not work very good for kids younger than 3, unless you have the very rare well behaved toddler who will listen to you when you tell them not to unbuckle their seatbelt! But once they are at an age where you decide they can sit in the airplane seat using the seatbelt, CARES is a great addition to the seat belt to make them safer. If they can undo their seatbelt, they can undo it whether CARES is in use or not.