Two questions come up without fail before a family trip: should you take your car seat on the plane, and what happens on arrival. The answers depend on one text, the code de la route, on a European approval standard, and on a legal distinction few travellers know: the one that separates a taxi from a private hire vehicle.
The French rule: ten years old
Every child under ten must be placed in an approved restraint suited to their build and weight. That is the general rule, with no condition of duration or distance: it applies to ten minutes just as much as to three hours of motorway.
The seat goes in the back. Three situations allow the front: the vehicle has no rear seats, the rear seats are already occupied by other children, or the baby travels rear-facing in an approved device — in which case the front airbag must be deactivated. A child holding a medical certificate stating that they cannot use a restraint is exempt, the certificate to be produced if the car is stopped.
From ten years old, the vehicle’s seat belt is enough, in the front as in the back. A breach is a fourth-class offence: a fixed fine of €135, rising to a maximum of €750. Responsibility rests with the driver.
R44, R129, i-Size: what has changed
Two approval standards still coexist in French cars. The older one, R44, classified seats by weight group. The newer one, R129, known as i-Size, classifies them by height, requires a side-impact test and extends the compulsory rear-facing period.
An important point for anyone inheriting a seat or buying one second-hand: R44-approved seats can no longer be sold since 1 September 2024, but they may still be used. An R44 seat in good condition, correctly fitted and suited to the child, therefore remains legal. It is simply no longer sold new.
| Child’s height | Device | Direction of travel |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 83 cm, and at least until 15 months | Infant carrier or i-Size seat | Rear-facing compulsory |
| Up to 1 metre | i-Size seat | Rear-facing for as long as possible |
| Above 1 metre and up to 10 years old | Seat, then high-backed booster held by the belt | Forward-facing |
Rear-facing is not an excessive precaution: it spreads the energy of a frontal impact across the whole surface of the back and head, where a forward-facing installation concentrates it on the neck. That is why R129 requires it at least until fifteen months and recommends it well beyond.
The case of taxis, and why a private hire vehicle is not a taxi
The code de la route provides two exceptions to the restraint requirement: public transport vehicles and taxis. In a taxi a child may therefore travel belted in the back, without a seat.
That exception is written for taxis. A private hire vehicle is not a taxi: they are two distinct professions, governed by different provisions of the code des transports. A taxi may be hailed in the street and wait at a rank for custom; a private hire vehicle operates only on prior booking and may neither ply for hire nor wait on the street for passengers. Both activities fall under private passenger transport for hire, but they are not the same thing.
The practical consequence is simple: in a private hire vehicle, do not assume the taxi exemption applies. The right seat is requested, and planned for.
What to remember. A child seat cannot be improvised when a flight lands. It is requested at booking, giving each child’s age and height — under the R129 standard it is height, not age alone, that determines the model. Novalia provides child seats as an option, to be booked with the ride.
Should you take your own seat?
Airlines generally accept car seats and pushchairs as free additional baggage, on terms that vary from one carrier to another. The argument for taking your own is real: the child knows the seat, you know how to fit it, and you depend on nobody. The arguments against are just as real.
- A seat checked into the hold travels unprotected and can arrive damaged. A device that has taken an impact must be replaced, and an impact is not always visible.
- You have to carry it, along with the luggage, a tired child and sometimes a second child.
- A seat lost or delayed with the luggage leaves you with nothing on the way out.
The sensible compromise: take your own seat when it will be used throughout the stay — hire car, weeks with family — and ask the operator for one when it is only needed on the airport-to-hotel run.
Arriving on a long-haul flight with young children
The difficulty is not the car journey. It is the sequence before it: disembarking, border control, baggage belt. With young children it always takes longer than planned.
Two points help to plan it. First, border control: since the European Entry/Exit System came fully into service, third-country nationals on a short stay have their biometric data recorded when crossing the external Schengen border — facial image and fingerprints, the latter not taken from children under twelve. A family therefore passes through faster than a group of adults, but the control post remains a step to budget for.
Second, the waiting time on the transfer side. At Novalia, flight tracking sets the pick-up by the actual landing time and 60 minutes of waiting are included after it: the time between the airbridge and the arrivals hall is not charged. The chauffeur waits in the arrivals hall with a name board, which saves looking for a car in a car park with a pushchair.
A few useful habits for the rest: keep what you need to change and feed the child in the cabin bag rather than the hold, keep the pushchair to the boarding gate when the airline allows it, and give the exact number of passengers and bags when booking. A family of four with two child seats, two hold suitcases and a pushchair does not fit in a Sedan: it is a van, and that is decided beforehand, not on the pavement.
To arrange a family transfer, tell us the children’s ages and heights: contact@novaliafleet.com.
Sources
Every figure in this article comes from one of these sources, consulted on 18 September 2026. Dates and fares published by third parties may change without notice.
- Sécurité routière — Child car seats: travelling safely with a child on board
- Sécurité routière — Carrying a child in a car
- Justice.fr — Seat belts and child car seats: the rules for travelling by car
- Légifrance — Code de la route, article R412-2
- Ministère de la Transition écologique — Taxi, VTC, VMDTR and CPA: the regulations
- French Ministry of the Interior — All about the entry-exit system (EES)
