Safety of lap-held infants in aircraft

Aviation safety regulations permit the carriage of an infant passenger on the lap of an adult. This practice is known to be unsafe in emergency landing scenarios; however, no prior study has quantified the risk of injury associated with this seating configuration. Depending on the jurisdiction the flight is operating under, the infant must either be unrestrained or restrained by a supplementary loop belt. No prior study has compared the relative safety of these restraint conditions. A validated numerical model was used as an experimental platform for the prediction of occupant injury potential with a focus on head injury. Observations were used in three ways: to compare the relative safety of different configurations, to evaluate safety in terms of a published occupant protection standard and to predict the occurrence and severity of a particular injury. Analysis involving the lap-held infant demonstrated that this seating arrangement does not represent a means of protecting an infant from injury in an emergency landing scenario regardless of restraint condition. During the impact sequence an unrestrained lap-held infant is likely to be projected through the aircraft cabin, while a lap-held infant restrained by a supplementary loop belt is at risk of serious abdominal injuries.