CARES Airplane Safety Harness Not Permitted on Recent Flight
 

We were returning from JFK to SD on Tuesday, January 7 with our 2.5 year old daughter on American Airlines. Prior to takeoff, the flight attendants told us that the pilot indicated that we could not use our CARE Airplane Safety Harness during taxi and takeoff.

We informed the flight attendant that we had used the harness on 11 previous flight segments including 5 in the last 2 weeks including an earlier flight that day on AA Flight 101 from LHR to JFK and 4 previous AA flight segments last October. We also told the attendants that our toddler would not remain seated without the harness. She would release her seatbelt and squirm. We also told the attendants the device was FAA approved and that the pilot was not correct. The flight attendant accused me of ‘jumping down my (her) throat’. They let my daughter stay seated with the harness until a few minutes before take off when finally another flight attendant told us the pilot would not take off with the device strapped to the seat.

We had been in transit for over 20 hours, so in desperation my wife held our daughter during takeoff. It’s the only way she’d stay ‘secure’ without the strap.

We believe the flight attendants and pilot are poorly trained, poor in customer service, and endangered our child.

I do not work for American, but another us carrier. After reading your post I reviewed our companies operations manual, which is a binding faa document, and those devices are still not allowed to be used for take off and landing, only for use enroute. The faa sets the policies for each airline and the interpretation of the regulations sometimes varies depending on which regional office the airline is headquartered in. All any crew can do is follow the policies laid down in their manuals by the faa.