Here is this week’s “guest blog” post by NYC Dads Group member David M. This caring dad describes his recent travel success and woes…
At last week’s SAHD’s meetup, a somewhat spontaneous conversation arose — about traveling with our young kids. As a new dad with a 7-month old daughter and close relatives and friends across the globe, I was interested in hearing about other experiences and sharing my own. Luckily, our daughter is a terrific air traveler (so far) and on her three flights to date she has been a pleasure for us to deal with. On our most recent flight in fact, other passengers were shocked to see her as they walked by us to depart – she hadn’t made a peep the entire way back from Grandma and Grandpa in Florida. But I learned something very important on tat trip – in the current air travel climate of service cuts and no-frills, not all airlines are equal in how they treat young children and their parents.
I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing the joy of becoming a dad – but there were also moments I looked forward to as part of the rights of passage of a parent. Frankly, some of these carried with them years of built up anticipation and perhaps even some resentment from waiting on the sidelines as I watched parents and young children receive “special treatment.”
I say this tongue in cheek, but truly, I was excited to travel with our daughter and be able to board the plane first, calmly check our stroller and car seat at the bottom of the ramp and settle into our seats without having to inconvenience fellow travelers too much. Well, much to my surprise, it seems that Delta Airlines no longer offers that service to families traveling with young children. When I asked the gate agent about it, she informed me that they had put the question to their frequent flyers, who in turn had voted to stop this process.
So here we were, stroller, car seat, diaper bag, carry-ons and 7-month old daughter in hand at an overcrowded Delta terminal at LaGuardia on a Friday morning in August and we had to wait to board the plane. Once we got on, we struggled around seated passengers, and already-filled overhead compartments and settled in. I should say that we had wonderfully friendly seat neighbors on the flight and that made it all fine – but the Delta staff was completely unhelpful.
On our return flight, now prepared for the general boarding policy, my partner boarded first to secure seats and overhead storage and I followed later with the stroller, car seat and our daughter – but even then, my partner was stopped by the ticket agent because he had an “extra” carry-on (the diaper bag) and we had to prove that we were in fact traveling with a child.
Needless to say, we’ll do our best to avoid Delta flights with the little one in the future. Our other flight with or daughter was when she was merely 3-days old and we were bringing her home from Nashville where she was born. We flew American Airlines then and it was a terrific experience – everyone was very helpful and attentive – something very much appreciated by brand new parents.
So it seems there’s a new parental “right of passage” in which I now find myself engaged. I not only shop for the best airline fairs, but I find myself calling the airlines and pouring over their websites to check on their policies for traveling with small children. But the best help has been from talking with other parents and finding out their tricks for traveling – so thanks in advance to all the dads’ who’ll be part of those discussions.
And in case you’re wondering, when we travel to Brazil to visit our daughter’s other grandparents for the holidays, we’ll be flying American.
It would truly be helpful to get some advice from a travel expert on best practices of flying with your kids. Parents, feel free to share suggestions or tricks of the trade for successful travel with the little ones, especially as we head into the holiday travel season.
We are about to have to fly for the first time with our 4 month old.
Checking ahead for the airlines policy is a great idea and will save a few headaches.
Traveling with a baby is challenging enough.
Cheers,
Jeff
My wife and I traveled on a plane with our twins when then were 8 months and again at 10 months. We bought 3 seats for the 4 of us both times. The first time worked out great with one baby as a lap baby. The second time worked out even better. On the departure, we asked the gate agent for tags to gate check our stroller and one car seat. The agent gave us one tag and said don’t worry about the other car seat. She gave us the 4th seat for free, AND moved us from the last row of the plane to the first row past first class! The bulkhead isn’t great because you can’t keep things at your feet for landing and takeoff, but it worked out fine. On the return, the gate agents were not friendly, but my wife asked nicely about space on the plane and they also gave us the 4th seat for free. Thanks American Airlines!
A piece of advice that was given to us before flying was to change the nipple size for the bottle. We use level 3 nipples but bumped down to level 2 for the flights to make the bottles last longer. It was also suggested that we start feeding as soon as the plane picks up speed on the runway for take off, and not before. If you start feeding too soon you run the risk of running out of milk while you are still waiting in a line to take off.
We just flew Delta for the first (and last) time for our recent trip to Orlando. We were shocked that they don’t pre-board. It’s all general boarding, so you have to fight the crowds with strollers, baggage, car seats and diaper bag. So we pre-boarded ourselves on the return trip. When they announced zone 1, we just went up and boarded.
We have traveled many times with our twins via planes and our own car. Have enjoyed most of the flights and glad initially that the twins were lap babies. As the twins got older we started booking a third seat and rotated the children in and out of the car seat we brought on board. The other hard part to remember is the baggage handling fees the airlines are now all charging. Because of this, plus the fact that I really hate rental cars, I am driving to San Diego next summer. We have been traveling with the twins since they were roughly six weeks old and probably won’t stop. We are even planning to head to Italy in 2011. At least we now know to avoid Delta/Northwest. Southwest Airlines seems pretty good as well. Southwest lets you board between the “A” Group and “B” Group if you do not already have an “A” group boarding.
We flew American whilst taking our new 3m old baby on his first trip home back to the UK from NY to meet his grandparents. They were pretty good in some respects and they preboarded us and were very nice. We’d heard about onboard bassinets and had tried to reserve but they operate a first come frist served approach, we got onboard and were seated in the bulkhead which has special holes where the bassinets fit. However 20 mins after takeoff the young couple 3 seats over with a baby also asked for the same thing, turns out the plane only had one of these bassinets ( which fold flat) even though there were attachment spaces for about 6 of them, so we were in an awful position where we had to fight with them over it. We won out as we’d asked first and asked multiple stewardesses but seeing people who 20 minutes earlier who had been admiring our baby and comparing notes on childhood now hating us because they had to hold their child for the flight because we had the only bassinet onboard made us wonder why American says they are phasing them out, they really took up hardly any space.