Large Pushchair ban at Terminal 1

Oct 5, 2011 by admin

Pushchair ban at Terminal 1

ITN London News contacted me yesterday evening to investigate the pushchair ban at terminal 1 (read here for the Evening Standard story). Feeling like a salty veteran having travelled back and forth to America several times, on my own, with two children, I felt that I might be a good person to review the experience.

Correspondent Toby Sadler came along with me to see what it would be like to fly to Manchester with my 2.5 year old son this morning. Toby recently became a father himself and took an empathetic look at what travelling through Heathrow with a toddler under one arm and bags hanging off the other might be like.

I took my larger, easy to manoeuvre, three wheeled pushchair so that I could negotiate pulling a suitcase, pushing my son and wearing my rucksack. When the car arrived to take us to the airport there was no car seat, so along came my enormous shoulder bag containing ours.

When we got to the airport we were told that my three wheel push chair was too big, and too bulky to go through the terminal. The ticketing agents explained that the crew at the gate would not be able to drop it down the chute to go onto the airplane. The agent said that if that it was a collapsible push chair, they would allow us through the terminal (the problem with these small push chairs, they are really, really difficult to push with one hand and not ideal for travelling.)

When moving through a space that is particularly un-child friendly, like an airport, with an infant, toddler, both or multiples; the difficulty is not only the weight of the bags and moving the children, which are tricky enough: there is a huge safety risk.

Watching one child with my tickets, passports, visas, luggage and valuables was stressful enough; but if there were two or more child and one does a runner what do you choose? The bags? Which kid gets left behind? It’s not just the lose toddler’s safety that you worry about, but adults who have difficulty walking or who may not be looking for something coming at their knee caps.

We had absolutely no queue for security, and even with that my son threw himself on the floor, refused to be photographed, at one point fell down bumping his head and screaming murder; ran through the metal detector and set it off. Now imagine if I had two, or more! There is simply no way you can go through terminal 1 without a pushchair on your own with more than 1 child. Janis at Really Kid Friendly pointed out, what do you do with an infant in the loo?

The absolute worst part is baggage claim. Have you ever seen a child near one of those carousels? They are extremely dangerous and all they want to do is touch them, all you want is to see your bag so you can escape the 7^th Circle of Hell.

Easiest solution, take the abandoned push chairs in baggage reclaim and give them to the ticketing counters so families can get on their flights.