Tag Archives: Flying

boy-and-airplane

the low-down on flying with children of all ages

boy-and-airplane
Photo credit: anyjazz65

Chris Elliot’s post regarding an unsuspecting consumer charged for a lap child on an international flight took me by surprise. Chris was obviously provoking a discussion on the outlandish ‘fees and taxes’ levied on airfares. But it seemed to me that very few of the folks who left a comment really knew anything about flying internationally with children under two!

Firstly, in response to Chris, I believe it comes down to the semantic difference between seat, ticket and passenger. In general, all ticketed passengers have seats. Children under two flying domestically may not be ticketed – if they do not have their own seat. Internationally, all passengers (including children under two without a seat) should have a ticket. Taxes and fees are levied on tickets.

On flying with children: I’ve flown internationally with my kids more frequently than domestically (both sets of grandparents and all relatives live overseas), and I’ve worked, lived and breathed technology for all of my adult life so I don’t think twice about researching and finding any information I need online. But I recognize that I’m unusual in this sense and so, it seems to me, that there’s a need for a handy-dandy reference on flying with children for anyone who hasn’t yet flown with their child and is wondering where to start looking for information on how and what to do.

Use the internet for pre-trip research. Most airlines publish their policies relating to the carriage of infants and children (and everything else) on their websites. If you don’t already know the airline’s website address, a simple Google search on the name of the airline with which you wish to fly should help you quickly find it. Most airline websites have at least an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page and also a search box on the website. To find the rules about flying with an infant, search for ‘lap child’. If you’re planning to fly with a low-cost carrier, double-check rules and fees – for equipment such as car seats.

A base airfare DOES NOT INCLUDE taxes and fees. Typical fees added to the cost of the ticket include: taxes, landing fees and fuel surcharges and that’s before calculating extra bag fees, priority seating or any of the other additional charges which airlines have recently started implementing. Some websites and travel agents quote the entire fare including fees and taxes you need to check the details of the fare offered to know exactly what’s included. FREE airline tickets are only free if someone else is paying for your flight.

Airfares are levied per seat not per person . Airlines may run special fares for children between the ages of two and 12, but typically you will pay the same amount for a seat for your child as you pay for your own seat. On domestic flights, a lap child may be free. For international flights, expect to pay 10% of the full fare for a ticket for a lap child. Whether or not the airline charges fees and taxes for a lap child varies by airline. Check the airline policy before you book.

Domestic and International Differences. There are different rules governing the carriage of passengers within a country versus between countries. The legalese for international flights is long and complicated, the fact that a ticket is required for every passenger is important to know.

Age-specific tips
0-6 months. On both domestic and international flights, at this age you can choose to purchase a seat for your child or have him seated on your lap during the flight. Check the airline’s policies before you book. If you wish to bring a car seat on board the plane, your child will need his own airplane seat for which you will have to pay full fare. I strongly recommend always purchasing a seat for your infant. It’s safer and more comfortable for you and him. Plan your flight to coincide with naptimes to increase the probability that your child will sleep through the flight. Since an infant’s daily schedule is not necessarily regular, this can be tricky to plan for, but the hum of the engine often soothes very young children to sleep. Cabin pressure changes are difficult for infants. Try to encourage your child to nurse or suck on a pacifier when these occur at take-off and landing. Make sure to pack sufficient feeding and diapering supplies.

6-18 months. All the suggestions given above for flying with an infant are still valid. But, your child is older and less likely to sleep through the flight. If your child doesn’t sleep, expect to do a few laps of the cabin to keep him amused. Pack snacks and toys for entertainment.

18 months – 3 years. Flying is difficult with children in this age range when most kids are still napping at least once during the day but are on the go the rest of the time. Car seats are optional based on your own safety preferences. The CARES harness is a handy alternative to a bulky car seat. You’ve probably got diapering and feeding on the go mastered by the time your child is this age but for a toddler to sit in a seat for hours at a time is a herculean effort for you and him. Entertainment is key. Stick to simple toys with no small parts (which can fall on the floor and cause you untold misery hunting around among shoes and bags to find them again). Books, crayons and paper, finger puppets, and pipe-cleaners all work well. If you can get your child used to listening to music or audio-books prior to the flight, you will relish in the benefits of this when you fly.

3 years and up. If your child will watch a movie at home, whether you usually limit screen time in your household or not, think about using a portable DVD player or laptop for this when you fly. Until your child can read, movies make flying so much easier. Preschoolers still need some active entertainment (for when the movie is over) and plenty of snacks. Once your child crosses into the elementary school ages, they can pack their own carry-on bag, choose their own treats and generally look after themselves on the plane except maybe, for when you need to escort him to the restroom.

And there you have it. It’s not rocket science (or even jet-engine science). Mostly it’s about being realistic, practical and finding out the information you need before you fly.

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CAM-LAX

long haul flights with little kids

A little confession: I have a fairly haphazard collection of photos of trips taken with my kids over the past 12 years. I’m not a photographer and I regularly just plain forget to take my camera with me when I’m out and about. But I’m learning and I’m also working on cleaning up my digital library. As part of this, I discovered some photos which together provide a ‘before and after’ view of a long haul flight (Seattle to Melbourne) with two preschoolers and a toddler. It struck me that sharing these photos would be simple way to show what this travel experience really looks like – for anyone considering such a trip but wavering because of young children.

We’ve lived in U.S. since 1995 and since then we’ve traveled back and forth between the U.S. and Europe with our boys at least once a year. From the beginning, many friends here would shake their heads in wonder at our seemingly super-human abilities to manage little kids and jet-lag. We don’t have any special abilities and our kids are not any better nor any worse than most children when it comes to flying. But, in our particular circumstances, traveling long distances to be with family was – and is – part of our life and part of our children’s lives. How could we not go to my brother-in-law’s wedding? Or rush to Ireland when my mom was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer? Our trip tally between the U.S. and Europe so far:

  • Seven family wedding (just siblings!)
  • Four weddings of close friends
  • Two medical situations
  • One 40th birthday party
  • Three ‘just vacations’ – because it’s easier for us to go there than to expect the rest of the family to come here

My first flight as a new mom (to Dublin) was hideous – mostly because of my inexperience and lack of preparation. The next was a little better. By the time we decided to travel to Australia with some friends and their two kids in 2000, we were old hands. The kids had their loveys, snacks, water and entertainment. They were in their PJs as we boarded the flight. We flew overnight so they would sleep. These and many other tips for long-haul flights with small children meant we had a fairly pleasant travel experience.

CAM-LAX

BG-LAX
CAM and his buddy BG waiting at the gate: LAX, 11:30pm before boarding the flight to Melbourne.

Barb-Melbourne
My travel-companion, Barbara, and her boys arriving in Melbourne.

me-melbourne
CAM and I after arriving in Melbourne.

Certainly this flight wasn’t as easy as a two-hour trip within the U.S., but it wasn’t hell-on-earth (or just above the earth) either. Traveling with children gets easier the earlier you start and the more you do it. No, they won’t be as well-behaved as an adult on the plane, but they won’t turn into monsters either. So, go for it. Stretch your wings. Pick a place you really want to visit and get your kids excited about visiting there too. You won’t regret it.

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What happened to Kayak and Farecast ??

I wrote about how I was a huge fan of Farecast last march. I still am, now I use Kayak just as much, but overall I just love the idea of having a meta-search engine that allows me to easily find the cheapest airfare possible for wherever it is I want to go.

BUT…

I spent two very frustrating hours last night using both Farecast and Kayak. And then Expedia and Orbitz and a variety of airline websites and now I’m utterly confused. Either someone (i.e. an airline) has some very dirty data, or I’ve been swindled into trusting these meta-search engines to provide a service which they’re actually not capable of providing.

I was trying to book a flight from London Heathrow to Seattle in December. I’ve been watching the fares pretty regularly (since June) on Kayak and all through the summer the lowest fare was about $550 return with KLM/NWA. Happy days. That’s a rock-bottom fare on that route. So, credit card in hand, last night I went to book the actual ticket. And then my world came tumbling down. I ended up paying $820 for the flight. Still not as bad as the $1200 my friend paid for her flight on the same route this past June, but not the lowest-fare-ever I’ve had my eye on.

What happened ?
I searched on Kayak, found my fare, and clicked on the select button – which, since the fare was offered by Orbitz, brought me to the Orbitz website. Three, no, four attempts to book this fare. Each accompanied with pithy, yet meaningless error message. So I tried the same search on Farecast, Expedia and then the KLM and Northwest Airlines websites. The user experience was a little more pleasant than Orbitz, but nary a sign of my $550 fare.

I booked my flight at the best price I could find and sulked a little. But I couldn’t let it go. For good measure I just searched both Kayak and Farecast for the same flights just now and the same $550 fare with KLM comes up top of the results on both websites. Obviously that fare existed at some point in time – otherwise it couldn’t exist in the search listings. But equally obviously it’s been sold out. Surely the usefulness of these meta-search engines is seriously compromised if ‘stale’ data, such as fares which are no longer available, is not removed from the pool of available of fares promptly ?

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Practical Tips for Planning A Smooth Flying Experience with Small Children

My children are now both in school, so it’s been a while since I’ve had to think about how to fly with really young children, but we recently had some family come from Ireland to visit us in Seattle with much younger children. Since I was eager to make their experience go smoothly, I came up with a list of suggestions for our guests:

1 person, 1 seat.
Even if you are traveling with a child who is younger than two (and could travel as a lap child), it’s safer and more comfortable if he or she has their own seat. With a full aircraft, there is precious little space in a coach class seat to care for an infant or toddler.

Choose direct flights whenever possible.
Keeping it simple. Avoid risks of missed connections and reduce your total travel time.

Coordinate departure and arrival times with feeding schedules, naptimes and other important kid-related activities.
Particularly relevant for long-haul flights. If your child will sleep on the plane, you may get a jump on jet-lag which will make the start of your trip easier.

If jet-lag is likely, give some advance consideration into how you will manage it.
This may be something a simple as remembering to ask the front desk if there is a park or playground nearby when you check into your hotel – so you can keep your children outside until the ‘local’ bedtime; or deciding in advance with your spouse or partner who is going to take the ‘early shift’ with the children when they wake up hours before sunrise.

Plan layovers carefully.
If two hours is a standard layover interval, add extra time to compensate for any risk of delay with your first flight and for getting from gate to gate with a child. If you’re traveling internationally, you’ll also have to allow for customs and passport control.

Take advantage of airport lounges during layovers whenever possible.
Use frequent flier club memberships or purchase access using Priority Pass (www.prioritypass.com) or Lounge Pass (www.loungepass.com).

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ustoeurope.jpg

The Farecast Take on Airfare Seasonality

If you are the person responsible for travel planning in your household, you may have already discovered “smart” travel search websites like Farecast.com or Kayak.com. These sites are not online booking engines. Instead, they help users find the best available option for flights, car rentals and hotels by searching across many other websites (the technical term is meta-search engine). Although you may think the amount of data returned from such a search would be just too much to display comprehensibly, both sites are downright fun to use. I particularly like the prediction indicators on Farecast.

As a dedicated travel junkie, I thought I should subscribe to a newsletter from one of these websites at least for a little while to see if this new technology could really help me. I chose Farecast for no other reason than it’s a Seattle-based company & I’m a Seattlite. Well, when I received my very first email from them, I was blown away. The topic of the email was “Search for Summer Trips Today”. The email included a chart of average airfares between the U.S. and Europe from Feb 2007 to Feb 2008.

ustoeurope.jpg
The chart is also posted on the Farecast blog.

From experience I “knew” that flying to Europe was more expensive at peak times (July, August & Christmas) than at off-peak times; and that I could usually get pretty good prices in April/May and sept/Oct. If Farecast’s data is correct, the seasonal differences in airfares are nothing short of stunning. As John Rauser, the author of the Farecast blog posting referenced above says: “for travel to Europe in the Summer, you’re looking at paying a 150% premium, or two-and-a-half times more than in Winter”.

Since Farecast caught my attention with this newsletter, I’ve become a travel meta-search website junkie. When searching for flights, I highly recommend you start your search at one of these websites. You’ll get flight choices from booking engines and airline websites you may not have thought to check.

But, I do have a comment for the fine folks at Farecast who sent out a summer trip planning newsletter in March. I booked the flights for my family’s trip this coming June in January. I paid $200 less per person than the best flight I could find using Farecast today (April 1st). For a family of four, that’s an $800 saving. Perhaps next year you could send out your trip planning email a little earlier ?

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Whoo-hoo! I scored a $0.01 airfare!

So we’ve all heard about “low cost carriers” and the supposed super-cheap flights that you can get by using Ryanair, Easyjet or any of the other such airlines in Europe and Asia. Well, I’m stuck out here on the west coast of the US and there doesn’t seem to be any $1 or $0.01 airfares being advertised in my neighborhood.

But, I am traveling to Italy in June. After much investigation and comparison shopping, we found the best fare from Seattle to (anywhere in) Europe with the new daily Northwest Airlines flight from Seattle to London Heathrow. But I still had to get from London to Tuscany. So I went looking again. I found a flight with Ryanair from Stansted (STN) to Pisa for $0.02!! Now that’s worth cheering about. OK, so with taxes, landing fees and the (lousy) dollar/pound exchange rate, the flight is actually costing me $30. Add in the coach trip from Heathrow to Stansted and the true cost climbs up to $50. But, that’s still a stunning $250 less than I would have paid for a connecting flight from Heathrow. (I can discount the cost of an overnight hotel because the next available flight out of either airport is the following day).

Of course, Ryanair does have an extremely tight baggage allowance for check-in and carry-on bags, so this one connection will affect what I can take on my entire trip. But, that’s not so bad: don’t all travel gurus recommend packing less anyway ?

In early 2007, Ryanair was reported (USA Today) to be exploring the possibility of opening routes between Europe and the US. The Canadian-based carrier Zoom Airlines currently operates routes between the UK, Canada and the Eastern US. The low-season fares for a flight from Vancouver BC to Manchester (for example) are up to $200 less each way than an equivalent flight from a major carrier between Seattle and London. However, as is common on low-cost carriers, you pay extra for a bevy of options which are usually standard on international flights: seating options and additional luggage allowance to name but two. The advertised price may also not include taxes and fees of up to $150 each way.

If you’d like to travel this summer, and are feeling the impact of the US Dollar’s lower purchasing power abroad, even though you may compromise on comfort, checking out the low-cost options for some or part of your trip may be a useful way to get where you’d like to go and still have some spending money over.

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Traveling Families and the Future of Flying

I’m a mom with two school-age kids. I work and I volunteer (when I can) at school-related activities. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for reading the newspaper and keeping up with what’s happening in the world. I try to read the Economist to catch up – even if I’m reading the magazine a few weeks after the publication date. For most articles, that’s OK. This recent article on the launch of Airbus A380 caught my eye.

The premise of the article is a brief summary on the development of Airbus’s A380 and Boeing’s 787-Dreamliner, the pains and risks that the development of each has caused for both companies and how these new airplanes will affect the way you & I fly. My inital reaction was that this last part was just hogwash. Whoever chooses a route or trip based on the actual plane which will be used ? At best, as a flying consumer, we search for fares at the right price, departures at the desired times and try to use an airline with which we might accumulate airmiles. The model of airplane used for the given flight is information provided by the airline which we might not even look at. But then I realized: I do book some trips based on what I know about the model of airplane used on the route! And when I make those considerations, it’s usually because I’m planning a long-haul flight with my family.

There doesn’t seem to be an (airline) industry definition for what a long haul flight is. Taking the definitions used by a UK charter airline, long-haul is anything over 7 hours e.g. Seattle – London (10hrs). Hmm, maybe the launching of these two new aircraft is indeed the beginning of “the next stage in the battle for the future of air travel”.

So why do I care about what type of airplane is in use on a long-haul flight ? And does it matter more or less if I’m flying with kids ? It turns out that this is something we’ve experimented with quite a lot over the past 12 years. My first flight as a Mom (with an infant from Seattle – Dublin via Atlanta) was horrendous. Primarily because lay-overs with small kids are hell. You think that two shorter flights will be easier on the kids, give them time between flights to stretch their legs. But really, all it does is make the journey time longer. Secondly, if you’re returning into the US you have to clear customs at your first port of call – which means you may have to pick up & drop off baggage more than once before you finally arrive at your destination airport. Thirdly, the lines (queues) associated with processing (check-in, boarding, etc) 400 people on a 747 are much worse than the lines required for a smaller, 250-passenger plane like an Airbus A340. So, when we travel from the US to Europe, we try to follow a “long flight + short hop” model. Also, we try to avoid the airline/route using a 747. (For us, this means using SAS from Seattle to Copenhagen). I highly recommend this approach if you’re traveling with kids. There is the added bonus that by avoiding flying on a 747, we avoid the larger airports (For us, the hell that is Heathrow).

In comparison: I recently flew to Dublin on my own. For that trip, I traveled with Zoom Airlines, a budget airline from Vancouver BC, via Manchester. I paid a rock-bottom price for the flight. I have no idea what model aircraft was used – I think it may have been a Boeing 767-400. The airplane was certainly an older aircraft: no video monitor in the seat in front of me, no choice of movies, music and video games – all of which can be vital to keeping kids amused on a long flight. The baggage restrictions were pretty severe. But none of that mattered: I was traveling alone.  

Which brings me back to the article on the A380. Based on my actions, it would appear that for most of our family’s flying, we vote with our feet for Boeing’s hypothesis that “passengers now want the convenience of flying point-to-point and that smaller long-haul planes make it both possible and economical for them to do so”. Time will tell whether or not that’s the strategy which gains the upper hand in the business of making aircraft. Certainly it’s the strategy I intend to use whenever possible when I take a long-haul flight with my kids.

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