[leachio]

Hi gang,

With our move hopefully getting closer we have had john masons round, anyway he said an interesting thing about our kids car seats. Our nippers are 3yrs and 8mths so both use a car seat, Barry reckons that the babies seat inparticular may not even be allowed in the country??? Something to do with NZ car seats being a diff type to ours, they have ones which he says lock into the seat somehow where ours is a britax model which you thread the seatbelt through. We are obviously gonna need to take them to the UK airport in their seats and was rather hoping the airline may allow them in the plane's hold (is that the place??) as we also need car seats for the other end too!

Hope that makes sense? Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks now ;)

[sizzlingbadger]

We had no problem with our car seats, we bought three over, 1 baby one and two high back boosters. Plunket (like the UK Health Visitors) do a regular car seat check outside kindys and school and said that our seats were in fact a lot safer than some of the NZ ones, they had no problem with them not being fixed. I've also noticed since a lot of my friends seats aren't fixed.

Just check them in as normal at the check in, shouldn't get charged any extra and they go in the hold.

[jubjub]

Your seats are fine, the only difference with NZ ones are that they have a strap attached to the back that attaches to a hook in the boot, if you car seat does not have a strap, then it does not need to be hooked in (that make sense??)

Cant help you with checking them in, but SB has covered that one for you too....

[Tia Maria]

Like SB & JJ, all our car seats are fine in NZ.

We packed the normal ones in the container and took lightweight ones on the plane.

We checked in at Heathrow, they stuck a sticker on them and then we were asked to place them in the 'large items cage', which was just near the check in desks. It didn't seem the most secure or safe method, but all our seats made it without damage.

Cheers

Tia

PS This was before all the stricter security measures, so things might have changed

[nippa&pippa]

After contact plunkets via email before we flew out enquires about car seats. They said that european car seat are the best car seat in the world! so We took our two car seat, jane and bebe confort (stage 0 and stage 3) and another one britax went into container (baby was too young to use stage 1) all of them survived both transit via plane and ship without any damage.

Just taking to check in, then they will ask you to take to 'oversize baggage' areas after had stickers on it, as mentioned above.

To be honest, I feel that british's car seat look much safer than NZ's after had looked in the baby shops. So i will opt for ask my parents to post out another stage 3 for my daughter as prefer to follow british's law on keeping child in car seat till 10/11 years old, after my husband saw how much children survived better during the accidents in car seats during his job in UK.

[kiwidebs]

I think so long as they are European standard car seats then they are allowed in NZ. I love our Britax ones - our two were both in the Renaissance when we moved and I felt they were really safe in them!! And we just put them both (the seats, not the kids :laugh :laugh - hmmm, but there's a thought......) in the hold of the plane so we had seats for our friends car in Singapore and as soon as we got to NZ. Don't get hire seats with hire cars - they are rubbish (in our experience with a reputable hire car company in Chch).

Def bring your seats with you!

Debs