We bought this for our Nuna Rava. Children are much safer if they are in an airline approved car seat during flight (versus sitting in the seat with alone or in parent's lap with a small seat belt attachment, if provided). If there is turbulence, neither of these restraints are going to do much to prevent a child from leaving the seat. I read somewhere that they've actually done the calculations of how many babies would die from airline turbulence sitting on their parents' lap and how many would die if their parents drove instead. Because the risk of accidents driving is much higher, they made the decision not to require protective seats for babies on air craft even though they know sitting on the lap or in a seat with adult seatbelt is not as safe as sitting in an airline approved car seat. Fortunately, airlines do allow certain air craft seats to be used. Each airline varies on their policies. With the infant cradle (backward facing) car seats, British Airways made me take our infant out of the car seat during take off and landing (?!?!?) and hold her, but during the flight she could safely sleep there. With the Nuna Rava in the forward facing car seat, the child is allowed to sit there the whole time securely. The travel bag is key to getting the car seat (and your child and the rest of your luggage/carry on ) from your ground transportation to/from the airport to getting on/off the plane. The Nuna head rest needs to be pushed in and the seat needs to be upright (not reclined) position. With attention to those details, is easy to fit the Rava in (recommend lying bag on the long flat side so that the car seat will be put in on its back before zipping). This is relevant because if you are traveling with a small child and want to take the car seat with you on the plane, you typically first need the carseat out of the bag and installed in your car or taxi to get the child safely to the airport. Then you need to be able to put the carseat in the bag while unloading the car. This bag is huge and very heavy with the carseat in it, but it rolls nicely. You can attach smaller carryons to it as you roll along in the airport. Surprisingly, we have been able to go through airport security with these gigantic bags. They don't fit through the xray (of course) so one needs to explain that it is a car seat for on board the airplane and then request a "manual inspection." You may need to be able to lift the bag with the carseat over the table or area where people are loading their items on the trays to be x-rayed. If choosing this option (versus checking the carseat), they you need to make sure you haven't put anything else other than the carseat in the bag as they will need to take the car seat out and do their security checks. This worked at London Heathrow airport, multiple U.S. airports and some mainland Europeans as well. Then main trick with taking the car seats on board, is that when one reaches the aircraft, you need to either take the car seat out of the bag before getting on (and then fold up the bag so it can fit in the overheard) for small planes. Or on really large jets, you need to carry the carseat in the bag over the seats to an areas near your seats where it is large enough to open. If you are boarding early and sitting in the bulkhead seats for family with British Airways, this is generally not a problem. This is another reason you can't have anything else in the bag other than the carseat, because then it won't fold up small enough to fit in the overhead compartment. Note, if you are not strong enough (or don't have enough hands) to carry the carseat over the airplane seats to your seat, you need to know that the bag with the carseat in it is too wide to pull down the airplane aisle of any plane we've been on. The galley area or in front of the emergency exits on big planes can be a good place to remove the car seat and put it back in as long as there are not a lot of other passengers around. Hence when taking the carseat(s) on board, we plan on being first on and last off. Now that our children are older than 2yo, they always have their own seat so there is a guaranteed place to put the car seat on board. However, pre-pandemic, we would often wheel to the gate, see if there happened to be any empty seats near ours and if there weren't gate check the car seat. We only brought this car seat on board when we were traveling with two adults. With one adult, you are looking at making at least two trips from the aircraft door to your seats (unless your child is old enough/capable to walk on their own to the seat).
