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Gearing up for your toddler’s first flight can be overwhelming. I scoured the web for all the best tips and compiled my favorites here! We just survived our toddler’s first flight, so these are field tested 😉
I am an anxious person by nature: overthinking absolutely everything until my head may explode. My best friend’s wedding was coming up, and I was officiating the ceremony. I would be attending no matter what. My husband and I went back and forth on whether this would be a family trip or not for months leading up to actually needing to book flights. We ultimately decided to all go when we found relatively cheap flights several weeks before the wedding.
I did quite a bit of reading on how to make this trip a success for all of us, and this is what I put in to action for our toddler’s first flight. A lot of this really comes down to budget and flexibility, so take what is useful and leave the rest!
Buy them a ticket?
My daughter is not 2 yet, which means we did have the option of bringing her along as a “lap child”. While we wouldn’t have to pay for a ticket for her, she also would not be entitled to a seat. Our flight from CT to CA was going to be about 6 hours, and I just did not picture my daughter (or us) doing well in a situation like that. So, we paid for a seat for her.
This allowed us to not only give our daughter her own space on the flight, it also meant we could bring her car seat on to the plane. We needed one at our destination anyway because we were renting a car, and it would help us “secure” our very squirmy daughter in her seat for longer stretches of time in the air.
It was an expensive option, but one I knew I wouldn’t regret.
Full disclosure: if this flight were shorter – say, 2 or 3 hours, I would have very likely opted to not buy her a ticket. Our budget was tight to begin with and this really changed what we could do for the duration of our trip.
Packing for a toddler’s first flight
Flying has become such an a la carte ordeal these days, so I had to sneak in a lot of bang for my buck when it came to entertainment options for my daughter.
There were going to be seat-back TVs on our flight, so I bought a pair of foldable headphones so she would (hopefully) enjoy some screen time. I liked these because they were compact and maxed out at a certain decibel level to prevent accidental hearing damage.
We don’t own an iPad or tablet, so I found this super fun drawing pad to bring along! It’s kind of like a combo between etch a sketch and those doodle boards where when you swipe across the bottom it magically erased… but bring it to 2021. We got it in the mail and my husband and I spent more time playing with it than my daughter! She quickly became obsessed and it is an excellent tool to help with holding a writing tool while staying lo-tech.
We also brought along some of her most loved stuffed animals and this threading toy, but clearly we were heavily banking on the seat back TVs being a big time suck for her 😂.
One important thing I did leading up to the trip (especially while I was packing) was explaining to her what we were doing. I compared the plane and flying to being like a birdie because she loves birds. I tried to be as enthusiastic as possible and keep it very superficial. This helped when we were actually heading to the airport because when I asked her if she remembered what I had been telling her she got very excited and stayed happy all through take-off.
Extras
The biggest item we had to accommodate was her car seat. I registered for this car seat as a baby shower gift because of the safety features and excellent reviews. Come to find out, its also one of the top rated car seats for planes! A real stroke of luck. I will not sugar coat this by saying it was easy lugging it around the airports… but the relief of knowing I was in control of my daughter’s safety was worth it. We brought it on the flight with us, but most airlines will check it for no additional charge if you need it at your destination.
I didn’t want to risk damage to our full-time stroller, so I found this affordable umbrella stroller to bring instead. We absolutely got our money’s worth out of this baby and will certainly be bringing it places in the future! The airline gate-checked it for us (for free) so we got to use it right up until boarding, and it was waiting for us as soon as we exited the plane.
In my “personal item” I packed a few kid friendly snacks: some to go pouches and pretzel thins. I also brought along infant Tylenol, some anti bacterial wipes, and spray hand sanitizer. We took advantage of the snacks and drinks on board as well.
Timing
We had a few things on our side when booking this trip. The specific days of the trip were flexible, we have the luxury of being driving distance to 4 major airports, and (!) the airport we flew could also change. This allowed us a LOT of flexibility when it came to finding our ideal itinerary.
We knew we would rather have direct flights. Our preferred home airport didn’t have a ton of options, so we had to play around with the dates quite a bit to nail those down. I used the Sky Scanner website in an incognito tab* to check daily for new flight schedules/ price changes. This helped gain a good perspective of when our window of opportunity was closing. Ultimately, we found exactly ONE direct flight within our trip timeframe that was actually well priced. I think that if we were trying to book this flight during a more normal point in time, choosing the timing of our arrival and departures would have been a little easier.
*Using an incognito tab prevents airlines/google from tracking your browsing history. It’s commonly known that if you look for flights/hotels/rental cars on any kind of consistent basis, they will raise prices. This just helps level the playing field a bit.
Overall Expectations
The key to a successful trip on any budget/timeframe/duration is to let go. Your toddler’s first flight is going to be tough. Try to play it cool and understand that a lot of adults freak out while flying too. Do not panic if they get upset. Try to find the source of their feelings and do what you can to alleviate it. Give them all the snacks. Let them watch all the TV. Normal rules do not apply when you are 5+ miles in the air.
You will reach your destination. The insanity you may be feeling is only temporary.
Enjoy the slowness, take all the photos and videos, and soak in the memories.
If you used any of these tips with success, tell me! I’d love to hear about your wins.
