An important step in the life of anyone is having babies. This is a wonderful and amazing experience. For many general aviation pilots however, this could be the end of their flying activity, or a serious pause. One of the many reasons of this (beside money, fearful wives, against nothing can be done) is the problem of installing a baby in a plane.

When I discussed that with a fellow pilots also being young parents, the easyness of their answer left me voiceless, given how simple it was. They simply use the baby seat for cars ! This is by far not possible in any type of plane. I tried it with my wife and my daugther in a DA40, because it has “standard” automotive seatbelts.

As you can see on the following pictures, the car seat fits in. I can’t really say it fits in easily, because the belt’s length is exactly mathing the seat, with no spare at all. But it does work.

Apart from putting the seat in the plane, an important remark is to take care of Baby’s health while in flight. The main issue is the variation of pressure, and baby’s ears. When we flew first time with our daughter, she was about nine months old. Luckily, she had a medical inspection days before, se we were absolutely sure that she had no ear / throat / nose lockages, which could lead to dramatical ears problems in flight. I even know a couple who had the first flight of their newborn baby, which was seven weeks old, with the blessing of their pediatrician.

In our case, the flight went good. The baby even enjoyed the light turbulence we had. On the flight home, she slept the whole way. The only thing we missed compared to a car ride were the sunshades, but as a first flight, it was short enough so this was not a big issue, but a good lesson learned.

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