With FAA’s new kid seat safety rule, will kids fly safer?
After years of debate and another six months allowed for implementation, the FAA has succeeded in producing a new rule that will not protect children. It doesn’t require enforcement. It doesn’t apply to airlines without websites. But it does require airlines to tell passengers the size of the seats so that parents can figure out whether their car seat will fit, if they choose to fly with a car seat.
As for actually protecting children? The FAA says that is “outside the scope of this rulemaking.” Amazing how the dysfunctional FAA can take so long to produce a rule that does nothing.
What has taken the FAA years to complete and will take another 6 months to actually implement will likely have zero impact on child safety. The final rule published today has very little to do with child safety and probably won’t make flying with young children all that much easier for parents who want to fly with their young children properly restrained. So what does this long-awaited rule actually require? Airlines that have a website – no website, no problem, your airline isn’t covered – will be required to publish the width of its narrowest and widest passenger seats “in each class of service for each airplane make, model and series operated by that air carrier.” The new regulation does helpfully require that the measurement of the seat “means the distance between the inside of the armrests for that seat.”
Meanwhile, here are instructions from the FAA about how to install the government-approved child safety restraint system (CRS) or device, though it is not required.
When data disaster strikes
As more and more travelers use personal devices and laptops while traveling for everything from addresses to itineraries, data backup needs to be a priority, rather than an afterthought. Personally, I have lost my iPhone while on a trip where I was going to speak at a travel conference. It is a sinking feeling. However, after the monetary loss of having to replace my phone, I was overwhelmingly pleased that all of my phone contents had been backed up to the cloud only the night before. Getting back up to speed was easy after an overnight backup download.
If you travel, you’ll lose data eventually. Yes, even the experts lose data. David Grubb, who runs CMIT Solutions of Tribeca, a company that provides backup services, regularly commutes between New York and London. On one of his trips, he lost a bag that contained his cellphone.
“This included personal data, plans I developed for a new business, personal photos and all my key contacts,” he says.
The handset was lost, but he’d taken the precaution of backing the information in the device to the cloud and was able to retrieve all his contacts and other data from it. Lesson learned? Keep your eye on your belongings — and “always, always take a proactive approach to backing up, rather than deal with the consequences afterward,” he says.
In a world where we’re more dependent on our devices than ever, data backups shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Disney is looking at surge pricing to better control crowds
So far, theme parks are one of the few travel products that have the same prices throughout the year, whether during summer holidays or in mid-winter. That is about to change. Disney is putting together packages of tickets that vary based on blackout dates. They want to encourage midweek visits and discourage weekend traffic.
The pricing move is an attempt to thin crowds during summer weekends and holidays, including Thanksgiving and winter break between Christmas and January 1. As of October 4, new annual passes at Disneyland are separating guests into three classes depending on available dates, ranging from a $1,049 ticket with no blackouts to a $599 one that won’t work on weekends in the summer or popular holidays. Disney also announced similar passes for its Florida parks.
The new ticket prices Disney is said to be considering would create different daily or multi-day ticket prices in order to encourage mid-week or other off-peak visits.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.