Travelling with infants

[0 post]

Morning all,

We’re expecting in April 2022 and will be looking to continue our travelling lifestyle, albeit with a little one!

What are people’s best advice, tips, blogs, go to website for travelling with infants? What are people’s best destinations to travel with a <1 year old.

Thanks

[NorthernLass]

Crikey, that baby’s overdue!

But seriously, a lot of people will tell you that the easy bit is when they’re babies and mainly feed and sleep, so you might want to plan in any long haul travel before they get to the toddler stage and you can then gauge what kind of child you have!

And make the most of the pre-school years when prices will be about 1/3 of what they will be once you have to travel in your child’s school holidays …

[Robm]

Get a baby zen yo-yo stroller as this is possibly the only one which folds flat into overhead bins on flights. On a recent flight the staff on both inbound and outbound asked specifically if it was a “yoyo”. Means you don’t have to bother with the hold and have somewhere for baby to sleep the whole time. On LCCs I’d recommend booking an extra seat if there are 2 of you and baby. Means you don’t have a random person next to you, your partner and baby and gives plenty of space. You’d need to check how to do this per airline as it isn’t always straight forward to book. 6 months old was perfect with our first child as he was a great sleeper. It meant he would pass out in the pram and we could take him in the pram and have dinner. Second child is not a great sleeper though!

[can]

The rule number two of travelling with an infant is that you cannot plan anything.

Relax, enjoy the ride and try to find some ways based on the baby’s demeanour.

Joking aside 0-2 interval is relatively easy.

[qc]

One tip is to book a long haul flight just before your baby turns two returning after their 2nd birthday – you’ll only pay the 10% for the child but they will get their own seat on the return.

We did that with our son, his wife and our granddaughter using 2 x 2-4-1s in F – it was lovely seeing her in her own seat on the return.

[0 post]

NorthernLass – haha well spotted! My partner is a teacher so we’ve been accustomed to travelling during peak, hence me wanting to make the most of maternity year as we can travel for 1/3 of the price!

Thanks to the rest of you, great advice!

[Carlos]

qc wrote:

One tip is to book a long haul flight just before your baby turns two returning after their 2nd birthday – you’ll only pay the 10% for the child but they will get their own seat on the return.

We did that with our son, his wife and our granddaughter using 2 x 2-4-1s in F – it was lovely seeing her in her own seat on the return.

I thought that wont work as the fare is calculated on the childs age upon return too. Which airline is this with?

[NorthernLass]

BA does this. A child’s age is only input for the date of outbound travel (0-2, 2-11, etc). Pax’s dates of birth aren’t requested.

[qc]

Carlos wrote:

qc wrote:

One tip is to book a long haul flight just before your baby turns two returning after their 2nd birthday – you’ll only pay the 10% for the child but they will get their own seat on the return.

We did that with our son, his wife and our granddaughter using 2 x 2-4-1s in F – it was lovely seeing her in her own seat on the return.

I thought that wont work as the fare is calculated on the childs age upon return too. Which airline is this with?

It was BA

[SamG]

+1 on the yoyo . very handy to be able to put them straight in it.

We’ve done a few flights now and so far so good. Airports are generally well set up for families and everyone is very helpful. Just take your time at security etc and don’t worry about holding anyone up.

Agree on buying them a seat if you can or flying BA Club Europe for the middle seat space. I did call into Easyjet and go through a painful booking process but I don’t know if he did it wrong but it was just booked as a child. But this was no problem at the airport, just inform them at the gate and the crew onboard in case they’re counting empty seats. I had a 30 min delay a while back (not caused by me!) where someone had bought a seat and seemingly not told anyone so they seemed to think someone was missing as the baby was on his lap.

Bring plenty of snacks, little toys you can get out and swap around so they’ve something “new” etc. Also try to fly around nap times – we’ve flown around lunchtime/afternoon each time which has worked well as it doesn’t disrupt their sleeping too much at all.

We recently did a break in Lanzarote and I think the Canaries are brilliant at this time of year for little ones, very reasonable prices, the weather is good enough to go in a heated pool for a few hrs without it being scorching and worrying about sunburn. Driving is easy so you can get out and about easily. We stayed at a H10 which was very family friendly which made life easy.

We’re doing Singapore + Bali this summer which will be a bigger challenge (albeit flying Singapore Airlines business class!) jet lag, having to share a single hotel room for Singapore etc but I feel relaxed about it now we’ve got a few under our belt!

School holiday pricing is nuts so we’re enjoying it whilst we can – it’ll be our caravan in France once they start!!

[NorthernLass]

School holidays are when the points game becomes supercharged in terms of value because, on the whole, points prices don’t vary as much as cash prices; you can even book off-peak avios seats on some dates. We paid for about 80% of our Xmas/New Year USA trip on avios and points (including flying out in F), when it would have cost at least £10k just for the accommodation if we’d paid cash. We’re coming to the end of our need to avoid term dates but for the past several summers (excluding covid times, of course) we’ve flown business class to the Caribbean for 2-3 weeks using our avios, timeshare weeks and hotel points.

[aseftel]

I haven’t found any good family travel blogs with an upmarket/points slant unfortunately. I could go on for ages but here’s a few pointers that are top of mind.

You want a small pram that can go through an airport and onto a plane as hand luggage – e.g. BabyZen Yoyo or Ergobaby Metro+. You will also want a baby carrier – the extra mobility they provide can be really useful.

3-6 months is a sweet spot. They will be pretty passive, asleep and portable at this age so this is your last opportunity to have a relatively ‘adult’ holiday for a while. From here it will get harder to relax on a sunlounger, go round a museum or go out in the evening.

You definitely want the bassinet seat on longer flights. For BA you can see and select available seats before you book free of charge if you have an infant. Other airlines you can generally select your seat free of charge as soon as you book – you will need to shell out for Expertflyer if you want to look at available seats before you book.

BA Club Europe (and some other European business class cabins) is great because you get a ‘free’ seat for the infant – although this is blocked by a tray table on the older ‘CEO’ aircraft. If you’re lucky the cabin crew will remove the tray table for you to make space but they aren’t trained to do so.

Booking accommodation is a massive pain. Especially as they get a little bit older you want a room with a separate space to sleep in (unless you like sitting in the dark and being quiet while they sleep). There aren’t any good search engines to find suites, let alone rooms with balconies, outdoor areas etc. In general hotel booking engines are a bit useless for infants – I would not bother listing your child unless they need a roll-out/proper bed. You’ll get used to emailing hotels after booking to sort out baby stuff like cots.

[Michael C]

No more “I’ll rock up to the airport 50 mins before take-off” ;o))

[NorthernLass]

You know you can just push the tray out of the middle seat in CE?! I discovered this one flight when I stumbled and leaned rather heavily on it to get my balance lol.

I agree about enjoying the baby months. Of course not all children are the same but for about 10 years our holidays felt less like holidays and more like entertaining one’s child in a different place. I didn’t get a decent tan for years because kids are just not interested in lying on sun loungers with a good book and a cocktail 😂

Places like Homewood Suites by Hilton become invaluable because they have separate sleeping spaces and kitchen facilities.

[Gary]

will be looking to continue our travelling lifestyle, albeit with a little one!

It’s possible but just different expectations.

@asftel may be right with 3-6 months being the sweet spot but not attempted as couldn’t quite tell left from right at that stage.

Then it progresses to travelling when they toddling, which is just a pain despite best intended cabin/pram/routine/hotel/destination. It was never again personally. OH braved few further trips with additional support but apparently still hard work.

Around 4/5 year-old is when one could countenance any sensible (ie enjoyable) foreign travel.

[R]

We found up to 12 months was the sweet spot, 15 months was the last time it was reasonably easy.
We did a bunch of 5 & 10 hr flights in Y and didn’t find it too difficult as long as the flight was time around sleeps though often got lucky with a spare seat.

A good baby carrier has definitely been the thing that you need to get. We normally travel with a larger rugged buggy and have no problem gate checking it even if we have to pick it up at baggage and not at the gate as long as we kept the baby carrier.

The biggest change for us was hotel choices.
– Room size and floor space is important now for crawling and playing.
– We like to be back for bedtime routine. This means a lot more time is spent in the hotel room. I try and look for suites if possible now so we can put the baby to sleep somewhere and have somewhere else to spend the evening.

Oh and don’t sweat it when people make comments or things don’t go to plan. I had an elderly lady say to me at boarding ‘the baby looks cute – we’ll see if that lasts’. I laughed it off and when deplaning asked her if she’d write a full review.

At 15 months we were flying and let the baby play on the floor in front of us. Next thing we know the guy in the row behind was telling us the baby had gone underneath and popped up between his legs 🤣

[Michael C]

Oh, and well-timed flights if possible, as small kids are so clockwork-y.
In our case, it was the SIN flight leaving early evening: he’d conk out for
10 of the 13 hours!