After departing with all seats full of adults plus 16 lap children a flight attendant became concern...

Narrative:

We were notified by operations that our flight was going to be full and that we had a large number of lap children; who would not be occupying a seat. It was only when I did the passenger count that I discovered that we had 143 passengers in seats and 16 lap children. I asked the operations agent if there was a limit to how many lap children we were allowed to carry. He said it was 'unlimited.' I thought it sounded strange; because I was always told if there were more than 150 passengers; we would need a 4th flight attendant. It was only after we were airborne that I thought about the number of life vests we had onboard. There are 143 under each of the seats; 4 crew member life vest and 10 spare. That [left] us 6 short for every person in the plane to have one. I researched this in the flight attendant manual and did not see anything that limits the number of bodies we can have onboard.when I arrived at work today; I asked a supervisor and after some research it was determined that we were in violation of FAA equipment minimums.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: After departing with all seats full of adults plus 16 lap children a Flight Attendant became concerned; later investigated and determined they were in violation as the number of life vests aboard was six less than the number of passengers and crew.

Narrative: We were notified by Operations that our flight was going to be full and that we had a large number of lap children; who would not be occupying a seat. It was only when I did the passenger count that I discovered that we had 143 passengers in seats and 16 lap children. I asked the Operations Agent if there was a limit to how many lap children we were allowed to carry. He said it was 'Unlimited.' I thought it sounded strange; because I was always told if there were more than 150 passengers; we would need a 4th Flight Attendant. It was only after we were airborne that I thought about the number of life vests we had onboard. There are 143 under each of the seats; 4 crew member life vest and 10 spare. That [left] us 6 short for every person in the plane to have one. I researched this in the Flight Attendant Manual and did not see anything that limits the number of bodies we can have onboard.When I arrived at work today; I asked a supervisor and after some research it was determined that we were in violation of FAA Equipment minimums.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1209180
Time
Date	201410
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Environment
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Commercial Fixed Wing
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Parked
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	Lifevest/Jacket
Person 1
Function	Flight Attendant (On Duty)
Qualification	Flight Attendant Current
Events
Anomaly	Deviation - Procedural FAR Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Other / Unknown

After departing with all seats full of adults plus 16 lap children a flight attendant became concerned; later investigated and determined they were in violation as the number of life vests aboard was six less than the number of passengers and crew.