Travel Car Seats
I’ve included my Google sheet round-up below if you’re just looking for a quick glance - or keep reading for a more in-depth discussion.
**note we included FAA approved seats in this round up. Be sure to verify FAA approval if you intend to buy a seat and install the car seat in the plane.
To transport toddler seats through the airport:
1.)This cart to help you wheel it through the airport
2.) This large carabiner to connect your car seat to your stroller
3.) This strap to connect it to your luggage
++ I’m not going to tell you what to do but if you gate check your car seat, you might want this bag.
Let my first say a few things:
1.) We love the car seats we have for daily use in our cars (Graco 4Ever DLX and Graco Extend2Fit) They are just seem very bulky to travel with, so I started looking into other options. I’ve seen the Cosco Kids Scenera recommended all over the internet and wanted to dig in more.
2.) Travel car seat selection really depends on the age you are going to start traveling with your child and how much you’ll be traveling. Purchasing a seat for travel (or with the thoughts of removing it from your car for travel) for babe from infant AND beyond are so wide and exciting. For us, now that our babe is 1 and still needs to be rear facing the options are more limited (IMO) but still pretty good. My biggest influence here is that babe is 90% for height/weight and I don’t want to buy a car seat she’ll grow out of before we use it more than twice. Had I known we’d be wanting to bring a car seat with us on three trips this year back when she was born I probably would’ve gotten the Cosco Kids Scenera in the beginning… but I didn’t know that then, the joys of parenthood. If you’re reading this and thinking of traveling with an infant, I’d suggest thinking about the Cosco Kids Scenera for sure.
We loved our Nuna Pipa RX (though we had the regular one and not the RX which for some reason isn’t easy to find/link?) for when baby was an infant. Infant car seat possibilities are endless and are impacted by what you plan to do with baby and what stroller system you want/need. We traveled with the Nuna Pipa & base in the Nuna travel bag once (and my cousin used it once) and it was great. It’s bulky, it’s heavy, but she was little and we did it. If we were planning on traveling all the time with an infant I’d have put more thought into it. All of the infant seats on the list below include the ability to install without a base, which is helpful for airline travel and quick install in rental cars/rideshares etc.
3.) I am likely going to go with the Baby Trend Trooper because of its lower price, and height/weight limits being on the higher side.
4.) We’re likely going to strap it with a large carabiner to our stroller to transport it through the airport. She does not have a seat on our two planned flights where we will bring this SO we’ll be gate checking it and using this bag to do so.