Oxygen for babies

Oxygen Masks – 3
Originally uploaded by drbrain

There was a story today about a Ryanair flight which lost cabin pressure as a result of which oxygen masks were released.

Fairly standard stuff that doesn’t worry me overly.

However, it made me wonder what to do about babies under two. You see, you can’t book individual seats for them, they have to sit on your lap.

So what do you do if you need oxygen and you only get one mask for your baby and yourself?

I asked in the comments section in the article I linked to above, and somebody relied:

It depends from aircraft to aircraft but all aircraft have 4 masks on certain rows, and therefore on a full flight passengers with babies should be checked into a row which has 4 masks. If in doubt check with check-in staff who should be adequately trained to know the aircraft configuration and also with cabin crew. It is a part of basic safety training that you know which rows have 4 masks, but again I can’t give a general comment on this as every single aircraft type I have operated on has differed in this respect.

However, a different person followed up:

However we flew on a Ryan air 737 over the weekend with our small baby and asked to sit in a row with 4 oxygen masks. The cabin crew didn’t seem to know what we were talking about!

So what do you do if the crew can’t help you and you can’t find a seat with an empty seat next to it?