Sixteen Flights with an Infant

Takeaways from our first year of family flying

Jul 19, 2023

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The first year of parenting has been the wildest ride of my life.

Many of the moments that stand out from my daughter’s first year occurred while traveling with her; something I was confident I wanted to do from the start but wasn’t quite sure how to make possible at first.

Today I share my takeaways from flying sixteen times (!) with our infant daughter. I cover this in hopes that it can help other parents, and future parents, gain confidence in traveling with a baby.

Most importantly, please know: everything depends on your specific baby.

Does your kid fall asleep the minute they are strapped into the car seat? Consider booking them a seat if the flight is long. Does your baby cry the minute they are placed in the car seat? Go lap infant.

There is no right and wrong, there is only what works best for your family. What follows is what worked for us.

Flight Planning

1. Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t throw our schedule out the window on travel days.

Sure, many of the usual daily routines simply can not be followed on travel days but we still do things like put our daughter's sleep sack on before in-flight naps to cue her that it’s time to sleep and respect usual meal / wake times.

By keeping our routines back of mind, both the baby and we as parents are able to feel rooted in some normalcy during busy travel days.

2. Lap infant until 12 months, lean towards getting them a seat on flights 3+ hours after that. Mobility changes the game.

Children can fly for free until the age of two by being ticketed as a lap infant.

While it would have been nice to have a car seat to give our arms a rest, the cost of another ticket wasn’t worth it until she became mobile.

When she started crawling, naps on flights became tricky because she wanted to move around to get comfortable. Understandably, she wanted to explore more of her environment and as a lap infant we had very little room to play with.

We decided that on any flight over three hours after her first birthday we would buy her a seat if budget allowed.

3. Consider nap times when booking flights.

Depending on the infant’s age and how your specific baby handles daytime sleep, they may need certain conditions (quiet, darkness) to fall asleep. Consider expected nap time when looking at flight times.

Do you want to take off right when a nap should begin? Would it be easier for your baby to fall asleep for a nap mid-flight?

Though we can’t always control how the timing shakes out on travel days, knowing how the activities of the day (check in, boarding, deplaning) will impact your schedule expectations can be useful.

4. Book short red eyes at your own risk.

At seven months old, our daughter cried for four solid hours of a flight from Nashville to California. The plane had taken off right at her bedtime and poor girl could not fall asleep. This was the worst of our sixteen flights.

If you’re going to fly overnight or into part of your child’s bedtime, know that sleep is not guaranteed - especially if the flight is too short to allow for a full night of sleep. We now avoid short nighttime flights where possible.

5. Single destination trips.

After three weeks straight on the road with our six month old, traveling to four different states, we vowed to prioritize single-destination trips going forward.

Biggest hindrances to staying in multiple locations are:

Unpacking and re-packing all of the baby gear. Sleep equipment, car seat, bottle cleaning station, etc require extra effort to transport and set up.
Dealing with the logistics of airport days which consist of transport to & from, going through security and waiting at the gate with potential delays.

This is not a hard-and-fast rule, but single destination trips are a guiding principle for our travel coming out of the first year.

6. Create a packing list in google docs, organized by bag, with checkable boxes.

More on my strategy in this post and to use my exact 0-6 month old packing list, see here.

7. Give yourself extra, extra time to get through the airport.

Even if, pre-kids, you were the type of traveler who rolled up to the gate as boarding started (my husband), be open to leaving yourself more time when a baby is involved.

Some situations we have run into that lead me to advocate for incorporating a healthy time buffer:

Formula/breastmilk/water testing at security that holds up the process
Lost car seat upon arrival
Seriously heavy traffic at the entrance to LAX that added an hour of delay
Not being able to add a lap infant online and having to wait on line at the help desk
Blow outs / vomits that require outfit changes for all parties

Boarding

8. Familiarize yourself with the specific airline’s family boarding policy.

Family boarding policies vary between airlines. Some airlines allow families to pre-board before anyone else while others do family boarding in the middle of the standard boarding zones.

Knowing the rules in advance (you can ask at the counter when you arrive at the gate or do a google search) can smooth out the process.

9. Decide on a boarding strategy in advance.

There are a few schools of thought when it comes to boarding a plane with a child:

Wait until the last moment to board in order to give your child the most amount of time possible to move around outside of the airplane.
Board as early as you are allowed to so you can all get settled and avoid having to fight for overhead bin space for the many items you’ll have with you. I am this person.
Traveling with another adult? Have one person board the plane early with all of the stuff while the other person runs around with the kid to tire them out until the last possible moment.

Wherever you land on the debate, decide on your plan of action before arriving at the airport so you aren’t left fumbling, stuffing the baby in the carrier and packing up the spillage from your bags without a plan when boarding begins.

10. When boarding, expect pushback on the amount of bags.

“You have too many bags.” When traveling with a child, it’s permissible to bring additional items on board that do not count towards your carry on allowance. This includes a pump bag (considered a medical device), a diaper bag (free when you travel with a child) and, on many airlines, a travel stroller.

Though these are stated exceptions to the regular bag allowance, on several occasions we have been stopped while boarding and told we have to check something - to which I am prepared to explain which bags are our carry ons, personal items and acceptable baby items.

11. Also, expect pushback on the size of your travel stroller.

“That stroller won’t fit in the overhead bin, you have to check it.” The gate agents are doing their diligence and depending on how your travel stroller folds up, if you are planning to take it on board expect to be questioned about its size.

Our stroller may appear to be too big until we explain that that handle easily clicks off for it to fit in the overhead.

12. The baby isn’t the problem, the amount of stuff is!

Consider how much you can physically carry on travel days.

Though you are technically allowed several exceptions to the bag rules and could theoretically board with 1x carry on per adult, 1x personal item per adult, 1x pump bag, 1x diaper bag, 1x travel stroller and 1x car seat, this is an immense amount of stuff to carry, plus a baby.

Imagine yourself walking through the airport and then navigating down the aisle of the plane holding everything you plan to carry on, then decide what to bring.

13. Carry on a clean surface.

Keeping a play mat or splat mat in our carry on has saved us on multiple occasions, like the time our flight from Miami to LAX was delayed for three hours and we created a clean play surface for her to move around in the terminal.

On Board

14. Entertainment via a combination of small, novel toys + snacks + random objects.

We pack several small toys, some of her favorites and some that she’s never seen before, that we can introduce as our daughter needs the entertainment.

Do not underestimate a variety snacks once a baby starts eating solids. Though, random objects have been the true winners for keeping her entertained.

The plastic cup that comes with your can of seltzer water from the beverage cart? Gold. Wearing a baseball hat? Spend 30 minutes letting her take it off your head and try to put it on her own.

Unfortunately, screen time is not very effective in the first year from our experience.

15. Hope for the best, plan for being “those people.”

There are flights where it seems like everyone is thrilled to have a baby on board and those where she is ignored, at best.

There are flights when things go quite smoothly and a well-meaning lady says “I didn’t even know there was a baby back here!” and there are those when the guy in front of you turns around after 6 hours and says, “Wow, she really wanted to be heard didn’t she?”

Most flights will land somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of easy to trauma-inducing. You’ll never see these people again, babies make noise, and you are doing your best.

16. Get your kid their wings. Put pins on a map. Commemorate the experience.

Flying with a baby is so many things. It’s rewarding, it’s hard as hell, it’s an opportunity to let go.

On multiple occasions, the flight attendant has offered our daughter her own little wings from the airline. This is an old tradition I remember from my time traveling as a kid that marks an achievement in a physical way.

Wings or not, I always place a pin on our map for the new destinations my daughter visits as a way for all of us to visualize her experience of the world growing, as she does.

Questions about flying with an infant or have your own tips of your own?