Travel worn and weary, we rolled in at 9pm last night. We were scheduled to get before 6, but decided to take a re-directed flight with the perk of …. a pair of free round-trip tickets to anywhere in the Continental US and Canada, good for one year! (Plus a $20 voucher for dinner.) We’re not sure how we’ll use the tickets yet but feel a bit excited about the possibilities.
The downside was that we were on three flights yesterday with two layovers. Will is a champion flier, but it was a long day for us all. He did great. Especially with the help of drugs, which I whole-heartedly encourage for little ones. (There is a big difference between the experience of air pressure change in awake kids versus asleep kids.) Now that he is 22 months old, this was probably the last time we’ll fly with Will as a lap child. We have no plans to fly until after Will’s 2nd birthday (November 21st), after which we are required to buy a ticket for him and bring some type of child seat. What a pain in the butt.
We figure that Will has now had somewhere in the range of 35 takeoffs. I believe that makes me somewhat of a frequent-parent traveller and have come to some thoughts about what airlines should be doing to make flying a bit more family-friendly.
1. I’ve found that many airports are installing play tables for children — an awesome plus. Keep doing this!
2. Offer milk on flights! Any kind of milk, just have milk. You have ice, why not chill some milk? Finding milk is actually difficult in the airport and running around trying to find some between tight flights is a serious pain. There is only so much a parent can bring from home and not enough to cover a full day of flying.
3. Let families with lap children book the bulkhead seats!! They are reserved for those who need wheelchair assistance. However, at check-in, should there be no wheelchair users, families should be offered these seats — and at booking, there should be a way to earmark them for families in the case of non-use. What we see happen over and over again is that last minute passengers get them or they are left only partially used. No one likes having the backs of their chairs kicked and kids really like to kick. We’ve taught Will that “gentleman sit” in chairs but it is inevitable with moving in the tight space that the chair in front is going to be bounced a few times. Put families in bulkhead.
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