Air travel can be expensive and confusing. There are a huge number of rules that occasional flyers won’t be familiar with. Airlines are right to enforce them, but when they come as a surprise they’re frustrating to passengers.
One mom got caught out at the airport, traveling with her child – it appears to be that the child was less than two years old when the family left home, but was likely more than two when they flew home. The family was away on their birthday – and that means they needed their own seat for the return trip. They hadn’t bought a ticket for the child. Fortunately there was still a seat available, but it cost $793 as a walk up.
What our family experienced while trying to get home was one of the most humiliating and emotionally traumatic travel experiences we’ve ever endured.
I’m sharing our story not out of anger, but because no family should ever have to experience what we did.@AmericanAir #viral pic.twitter.com/PYrTLn5DTU— Lena Anthony (@_LenaAnthony) July 21, 2026
There are two possibilities:
- The child was under two for the outbound and turned two before the return. That’s my read here. The child was required to fly in their own seat.
- I suppose there’s an outside chance that the child was already two for the outbound and American mistakenly let them travel as a lap infant. If that happened, it doesn’t create grandfather rights to violate regulations on the return.
Either way, American couldn’t legally allow the child to remain on a parent’s lap for their Philadelphia – Los Angeles flight. 14 C.F.R. §121.311 requires:
- An approved seat and separate safety belt for every person who “has reached his second birthday.”
- A child may be held by an adult only if the child “has not reached his or her second birthday.”
If the child were under two, they could sit on a parent’s lap. Two or older, they need their own seat. If it’s an overnight flight departing the day before they turn two, and arriving on their birthday, it’s the scheduled departure date that controls and the child is treated as under two for the duratoin of the flight. But a connection that departs on their birthday would require a seat for the second flight!
This is the common worldwide rule. Europe’s EASA requires a seat for everyone aged 24 months or older. Australia also defines an infant as someone who has not turned two.
Now, there are many airlines that make special accommodations for families whose children turn two during a trip. For instance, on British Airways charges only the lap infant fare for the return journey while giving the fresh two year old their own seat. Virgin Atlantic and Singapore Airlines do the same.
Oddly, TUI fly Belgium says that on package holidays, outbound age controls and a child who turns two can remain on the adult’s lap for their return trip. That is exceptionally unusual and I can’t quite reconcile it EASA regulations for two year olds to travel in their own seat.
It is the age for the outward flight that is the determining factor. If your child is one year old on the outbound flight and two years old on the inbound flight, your child will travel on your lap on the outbound and inbound flights. (For package tours; flight+hotel)
I do wonder whether American Airlines should have caught the issue ‘months earlier’ as the mom suggests. If the child was attached as a lap infant to in the same roundtrip reservation on the outbound and return, with the correct date of birth, and they were added prior to check-in then yes.
On the other hand, they might have:
- Bought two one-way tickets, so adding the infant to the outbound wouldn’t raise issues for the return
- Added the child at the airport, and they were added to the outbound only.
There’s no dispute that American was right to require a seat. The only question is why the passenger was taken by surprise at this, having to buy a walk up fare. I think a good customer service approach would be to refund the difference between the $793 they paid and the amount of a ticket they purchased earlier.
- That treats them as though they purchased a ticket for the child when they bought the rest of their tickets
- And the plane wasn’t full, so this isn’t preventing American from getting the full $793 from someone else.
If they were on a roundtrip, and did make the lap infant booking in advance, then American did this wrong and applied it only to the outbound. That’s when the customer should have been informed. And they still would have had to purchase the ticket. So it seems like this is the right solution even if American is fully at fault.
Now, she claims that “nothing changed” between the outbound and return. That doesn’t seem correct. Framing this as “risking my child being left behind” may have been how it felt but (1) no one was proposing that a two year old remain at the airport alone, and (2) surely the parents wouldn’t have abandoned the kid in order to take the flight by themselves like these parents apparently actually did.
While this is framed as “management’s decision” the requirement to for the two year old to have their own seat isn’t something that American had any discretion over. And complaining that she had to buy the child “an adult ticket” isn’t meaningful either (there’s no domestic child discount).
It’s fair to be unhappy with the seating arrangement. Obviously everyone wants parents to sit with their two year olds! Airlines were pressured to adopt family seating policies during the Biden administration, and American it tries to place children under 15 beside at least one adult, but the automatic process depends on the family being in the same reservation.
A new ticket issued at the airport is going to have seats assigned out of the pool of what’s left. There probably simply weren’t seats together, so they had to juggle seating with other passengers.
There have been calls to ban lap infants entirely and force infants to fly in their own seats for quite awhile in the name of safety, but that actually would make kids less safe – because who can afford $793 one way? More families would drive, that’s less safe, and there would be more kids in accidents as a result. That’s known as statistical murder.
The last time a child without a seat died in turbulence was 1994. That’s 32 years ago. In contrast, “About 150 children younger than 5 drown in bathtubs, buckets, toilets and other containers in and around the home each year.”
‘Them’s the rules..’ *tried as an adult*
This family sounds insufferable and entitled. Their response tells me everything I need to know.
If I can put my child on my laptop, then can I put my laptop on my child.
Asking for a robot friend.
I feel bad for them, but any time you deliberately or accidentally try to assume a complicated topic is simpler than you think it is- you’re going to pay the consequences.
I also would not be surprised if American does not have a mechanism to price a ticket correctly when a lap infant turns two in between the departure and return on a single ticket 🙁
I had the opposite experience many years ago. Our son was turning two on a vacation, but we bought a ticket for both directions, and used a car seat for him. On the return, the flight attendants were going up and down the aisle several times looking at everyone. Finally, one of the flight attendants asked if our son was on a ticket. Apparently, they had one more ticket scanned than passengers they could find. We said yes, he recently turned two. She said, oh, he could have passed. One of the differences was that on a ticket, you would get a meal (back in the day that they provided free meals in economy, so many years ago). The days when United partnered with McDonalds to provide a Happy Meal with a hamburger to kids (although slightly before they offered it).
@Stephen Morrissey — I’ll *beep boop* to that!
International? How would they know otherwise unless a passport was produced? Then it is what it is.
“, but when they come as a surprise they’re frustrating to passengers.”
best way to avoid a surprise is do a little research.. going into something completely ignorant of everything will cause problems.. but that is the people of today, it’s always up to someone else to spoon feed them what they need to know…
education matters.
that is why Trump loves the uneducated.
I’ll wager that Mom knew but thought she could get away with it. They cried for sympathy when caught.
I’m also of the mind that an infant needs to be secured with an FAA approved device, though that does not mean their own seat. You can get such harnesses on Amazon for less than $25. If your child is not worth $25, then getting left behind may actually be to their benefit.
Need to ban lap infants. We do in cars going 30mph why not in planes going 600mph.
Let them stay at home with the nanny
Need to ban lap infants. We do in cars going 30mph why not in planes going 600mph.
Let them stay at home with the nanny.
Whoever drafted that regulation never saw The Pirates of Penzance.
Did the parents volunteer the child’s age, or did the airline ask? Years ago when I was traveling with children under two and load factors were in the 60s, we never bought them a seat. Nobody ever asked their age, and we didn’t travel with birth certificates or anything. When my youngest child was about a year and a half, though, a Southwest gate agent demanded ID. We did not have any. She charged us a published fare, which Southwest refunded to us when we sent in a copy of her birth certificate.
[The last time a child without a seat died in turbulence was 1994. That’s 32 years ago. In contrast, “About 150 children younger than 5 drown in bathtubs, buckets, toilets and other containers in and around the home each year.”]
Terrible comparison. This ignores the % of children flying annually, versus, say bathing….. and that’s daily, hopefully!
@doug – is there a reason you bring Trump into this? Btw, your statement should read “And this is why Democrat AND Republican leadership love the uneducated”.
back in my airline days, we had this happen a FEW times, actually. Our internal policy was to just sell the child the same fare the parents paid (or apply the child discount, which we offered at the time) – sounds like this gate agent didn’t give a crap and didn’t want to ‘try’. I’ll be you any AA employee will chime in here and say they’d do the same as our policy at my old airline, which is to get a sup/manager override to basicly charge the same fare as the parents.
Actually, I think there’s another response and angle to this.
“What our family experienced while trying to get home was one of the most humiliating and emotionally traumatic travel experiences we’ve ever endured.”
If this is truly one of the most traumatic and/or humiliating experiences of your life….. Than that is excellent for you. You’ve have a spectacular life so far, if being out $800 and having some minor stress on juggling some seats is of the worst things that ever happened to you.
If true, I want your life.
Something similar happened to us when we lived overseas for a year. We flew on Concorde using points. We had a baby with us on the way here that we didn’t have on the way out. So we had to pay 10% of a full fare for the lap child, around $500. They wouldn’t let us use points for her. Too bad she was too young to remember an experience that is not possible at the moment.
In 1953, we sailed to Europe. On the outbound, I was under one and my parents paid something like $10. On the return, I was 13 or 14 months and they had to pay half the adult fare, even though I wasn’t participating in the 7-course meals or cha cha lessons. Why would these parents expect anything different? A normal 2–year-old without a seat, is not only potentially at risk during turbulence without a seat, but also almost guaranteed to pose a significant annoyance to other passengers.
CFR 121.311 (for Part 121 carriers) reads that an approved seat (meaning can’t be lap child)…with approved safety belt for each person …”who has reached his second birthday…. I don’t see any second birthday +1 day anywhere in the regulation. There are further stipulations regarding a child who is less than two on the outbound flight but over two on the return flight. They MUST have a regular approved seat with a seat belt. I’ve paraphrased but it is clear that the child cannot be a “lap child”. Carriers operating under CFR Part 135 have the same basic rules. Note to parent or guardian: it doesn’t hurt to ask the carrier if they offer a “child’s fare”.
I do think this rule of having to buy an extra return ticket if the child turns 2 while traveling is pretty well known.
I thought that airlines required a child to have a separate seat if the 2nd bday was on or before the last flight on the PNR. But, their website says:
“The infant must be under 2 years of age for the duration of the trip. If they turn 2 during a trip, they will need their own seat for the remainder of the trip.” These is not worded in a particularly understandable form. I couldn’t find and such policies on DL’s or UA’s websites.
This is why you ahould record all calls on your phone vis a vis travel until after the fact. The airline records the calls and so should you if legal in your state
@haolenate — I’m impressed with @doug’s attempt. If there’s a way to bring Him into it, usually I find it, and exploit it, as much as possible. Even I missed this! Bah!
@Infrequent commenter — Sailed to Europe in 1953? My word, you must be mid-80s or 90s. Which vessel did you take, RMS Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, SS United States, Île de France, Andrea Doria? Fascinating, if a real person, and if real story. Ah, nostalgia.
@Dan — Perhaps, the answer to rebuilding trust is countering their mass surveillance with our own. Oh, what the Stasi would’ve done with AI… *sigh*