My understanding is they can’t be rear facing because it limits exit access. Even in the window seat, emergency crews might need to gain access through the window and the rear facing car seat would be blocking the row.
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They started recommending a minimum of 2yo, but better to max out your convertible seat a while ago but I can’t remember exactly when. It is pretty common now to see 4-5yos still rear facing. To be honest, as long as your child meets the guidelines and doesn’t care which direction they are in (my son actually HATED forward facing when we had to switch him!) it is perfectly fine.
I only was challenged once with my daughter, probably in 2003 or 2004. I kept referring to the weight limits on the car seat sticker and insisted that she needed to be rear facing. The flight attendant then started to insist we couldn’t because it would “inconvenience” the passenger in front of her. I could have kissed the gentleman in the seat when he turned to her and told her he was fine w/ not reclining his seat. 
Our next trip we had two kids and the older one was forward facing so we had our younger one sit behind the older one.
Back then I flew with the printed out FAA rules that state the restraint must be used according to manufacturer’s instructions and was ready to pull them out if needed!
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This is what we do!
I’ve rear faced more than once on planes. I think it just depends on the flight attendants and their knowledge/experience. Or maybe it’s airline specific? We usually fly American.
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They have little mirrors that can be hung from the headrest to allow you to see a backward-facing child’s face. They can also be positioned for the child to watch videos. 
(We let our kids use devices in the van locally, but we save the video system for road trips. Makes it more of a treat. But whatever it takes to preserve parental sanity!)
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Yup. And I get that is a rare thing. But if the carseat is FF and not tethered and something like that does happen - and it does sometimes happen - it will smash the kid’s skull into the seat in front of them. When there is a way to avoid that risk by installing the seat RF, why risk it?
Sure, I get that line of thought. But I’m not arguing that airlines should require or have car seats. I’m arguing that if a parent has brought a car seat, they should be allowed to install it in the safest way.
I don’t think that is accurate. Some seats (ex. for infants) can only be rear facing, and these are allowed.
Oh, I had all sorts of regulations and studies I was showing her. I had this 15 page FAA Advisory Circular, which explicitly states that “18. PLACEMENT OF CRS ON THE AIRCRAFT… This includes placing the CRS in the appropriate forward or aft-facing direction as indicated on the label for the size of the child.” I had 49 U.S. Code § 44702, which states that “…the Administrator shall consider the duty of an air carrier to provide service with the HIGHEST POSSIBLE DEGREE OF SAFETY in the public interest.” I had this study by the Civil Aeromedical Institute on the performance of child restraint devices in transport airplane passenger seats that concludes that rear or “aft” facing seats are “the only available means of providing adequate protection that can be recommended.” I think I had some other things too. I showed the flight attendant all of this and talked to her about the liability the airline would face if they forced me to FF my child and it resulted in harm.
It made no difference. God himself could have come down and told this lady that the kid should be RF. It was made quite clear that my options were to FF or get off the plane.
Honestly, seven years later it still bothers me. 
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I agree with that.
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Our rule was that the DVD player didn’t get installed unless the trip was over 1.5 hours. 
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The only access rule is that the child restraint must be installed in the window seat if a single aisle plane or in the center of the middle section if a dual aisle plane.
Rear and forward facing isn’t part if the access guidelines.
If you have one adult and two children in restraints, you can have them in the window and center with the adult on the aisle, but there are some flight attendants that have pushed back hard on that
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It’s still normal to forward face on 2nd birthday, there’s just more awareness and more of us that choose to go longer than there used to be…when IDK. A lot of states still allow FF at 1 year and I know plenty of moms who did that.
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I don’t even have a player in my car. I was under the impression that it was for trips in their car, until we all rode together today and it got turned on for a 15 minute ride. 
Ours was portable and strapped to head rests. It had two screen so I could have one strapped to the back of one of the front seat headrests and one strapped to front of one of the back seat headrests when we had one forward facing and one rear facing. 
We only pulled it out for long trips. I like to thing that if we had a player installed in our vehicle, we would have had the same rule though.
We have a few iPads that we distribute to the kids for road trips (never for around-the-town driving). We also have a rig to put an iPad on the driver’s seat back and hook to an aux cord so all kids can watch the same movie.
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