Air Travel with Toddler, Going Home

ryan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:00:59 -0600

The "lap infant" thing is fine on the plane when it's a short flight, or when the baby is still an infant. But Meadow is 21 months and she likes to stand, jump, kick, and do all kinds of normal activity which for long durations Mommy or Daddy's laps aren't suited for (OK, mostly she wants Mommy's).

Since she's under two years, she flies for free on our lap, although we had to pay 10% of the regular fare for her on the international flight. This is because they do make special accommodation (if possible).

The first "trick" we discovered is that there's a flag in their seating system for lap infants. Make sure they've got that flag set for you. That way they'll only put people in the seats next to you as a last resort. We did this, and we made sure that my seat was one away. So, in the case where the plane config is three-seats, aisle, three-seats, we book Lu with the infant in the window seat, me in the aisle seat, and usually the middle seat will be left open. If they do put someone in it, they always agree to trade with me.

For the big jet (Boeing 777) the config is two-seats, aisle, five-seats, aisle, two-seats. We'd also read about the existence of a "sky-cot" for the bulkhead row. So we called and found out from American Airlines that about 30 seats are reserved for the gate attendants to assign, meaning it's first come first serve at the gate if you want the bulkhead. So the second "trick" was to get to the gate before anyone else. We got up at 4:30 AM on the day of departure, taxied from our digs in Paris to Charles de Gaule airport, checked-in, cleared security, and made it to the gate almost two full hours before departure. Lu was one of the first in line when the gate agent arrived, and it paid off. We got seats 20 C and E, which is the bulkhead and with the "lap infant" flag meant they'd only give away seat D as a last resort.

They didn't, and so we not only had a third seat for MJ, but we also made joyful use of the extra bulkhead legroom and the sky-cot. It's basically just a foldable metal bassinet (with turbulence restraint) that securely plugs into the bulkhead. Meadow slept there very comfortably, although it's really designed for smaller babies. Fortunately she's small for her size. She even enjoyed it so much that she sat in it to read books and work her puzzle.

The third "trick", which was mostly just luck on our part, but worthwhile to check, is which seats have DC power. I was keen enough to have brought the car-charger adapter for the laptop and it worked like a charm. We watched three movies without ever having to swap batteries. This was true for both the 8hr Paris-JFK, and 6hr JFK-SEA flights. For figuring which are the good seats on planes, I found this website very helpful: http://www.seatguru.com.

For flight status in general, this is our new buddy: http://www.flightstats.com.

The last "trick" should be obvious but I just have to say, for the record, that Laura's motto of "kill 'em with kindness" is definitely a rule to live by. Both in the check-in line and at the gate there was this horribly rude woman barking at every employee. Who knows if she was in the right or wrong, but who cares when you treat people poorly? Here's a vid that depicts two different styles of dealing with airplane attendants: which do you think gets better results?