[jimworcs]

The stroller can be dealt with later.. but if an airline lost the car seat and it was required to safely transport the child home, I would put the ball back in their court. You can often rent seats from Car Rental places, so perhaps you could have asked CO to rent one for you.

Unfortunately, however, I think you would face a basic problem. You don't say which country you landed in, but if it was either the US or UK, car seats are required to meet minimum legal safety standards, and seats which do not meet these standards cannot be sold. So, I think it is highly unlikely that CO would have offered you a seat which didn't meet these miminum standards. Unfortunately, these minimum standards were clearly below the standard of seat you would require. That doesn't mean in law that CO acted unreasonably. They attempted to mitigate your damages by providing you with a seat to enable you to transport your son home and that is what any court would require them to do. Unless you could show that the seat CO provided was below the legal minimum safety standard, I don't think you have a case.

The bigger question is why you persist with CO. They have repeatedly failed you and yet you continue to give them your custom. This is the reason airlines don't respond well to customers. They know that convenience of the route, or their localised monopoly position at their hubs, means that customers will often repeat fly, even when dissatisfied. This will not change, until the monopoly hub system is broken up and passengers like you vote with their feet. Ultimately, it is down you to you. You have to stop giving them your custom.