On Thu, 3 Sep 2009 22:48:31 +0000 (UTC), Fevric J. Glandules wrote:

Steve Walker wrote:

Elsewhere hire companies also do not help their customers to stay within
the law, for instance when travelling to Northern Ireland (travelling on
into the Republic) and using a Hertz hire car, we found that they cannot
provide rear facing child seats, only those suitable for older children -
and as the airlines will not allow your own child seat to be carried in the
cabin and recommend that they should not be carried in the hold either

When travelling with Fevric Jr., and now Fevrica, we've not had a
problem checking in the car seat base at no extra charge (with Easyjet).
The car seat itself is part of the push-chair arrangement and so goes
into the hold at the gate.

Another of my pet hates: we went to Cyprus a few years ago with our two
young children, flying from Manchester to Paphos we took the double trolley
to the gate and were met with it again at the aircraft steps in Paphos, but
on the return journey, the trolley was removed at the aircraft steps and
only returned to us at Manchester's baggage reclaim - unfortunately this
involved my wife (3 months post c-section and septaceamia and still
somewhat weak) and myself (two very dodgy knees) to carry our cabin baggage
and both children a significant distance and then stand in a very long
queue for passport control before we could get the trolley (at one stage I
was trying to carry the bags and both children as my wife could otherwise
go no further). This despite informing the travel agent and the airline of
our problems in advance and again before boarding - this has since happened
at each return that we have made to Manchester and it appears to be
Manchester's policy to only return trollies via the normal baggage reclaim
(fortunately my knees are a lot better now, but we also have three kids!)
That time we only made it as one of the cabin crew saw our plight and
carried one child for us - he promptly threw up over her uniform! Their
only suggestion was to declare ourselves disabled and book wheelchairs, but
we are not and did not need wheelchairs, simply access to our own trolley,
as has been provided at other airports.

Junior is now two so if he wants to come with us next time he'll
have to find the money to pay for his own seat on the plane from
somewhere.

Fevrica's got another year and a half of freeloading in front of her.

(due to straps and handles being vulnerable, they will not accept any
responsibity for damage), this makes life a little difficult.

Our local airport has a stand where some guys will wrap whatever you
want in umpteen layers of super-strong cling-film for about a fiver.

Useful, but I've not seen anything like that here.

SteveW