Traveling with or without Children…..

There was a time when airlines used to offer discounts to children…. Two nice discounts were available: 1) a 25% discount for children between the ages of 2-12 whereas they would get their own seat and 2) an 80% discount for children under two who would travel as lap babies. These discounts helped to cut down the expense of air fare for families.

The 2-12 year old discount has pretty much disappeared on most airlines(although there may be the odd airline that still offers a child’s discount) and now they pay full fare while there is still a discount for the lap babies.

When traveling with a lap baby on the larger wide body jets you should ask about the front middle bulkhead seats and if there is a bassinet that can be inserted in the bulkhead. This is generally good for children up to 20 pounds and we used it on one flight to Greece. It was nice to have since it meant that we had the option of not having Anastasia on our lap for 10 hours. You will want to keep your eye on the little one though as she is right under neath the movie screen and should she stand up it will look to the other passengers like a giant baby is invading the scene. It may be cute for a second, but after anything longer than that you run the risk of having a planeload of unhappy passengers! You’ll also want to keep an eye on your baby because the bassinet has low sides so it is very easy for a child to fall out of it….

There is also another restriction that you will want to check up on before purchasing your tickets and that is the number of children who can travel per parent. I’m pretty sure that a single parent with three children is not acceptable but you’ll want to check with the airline to find out if their limit is one or two.

The other issue is sending an unsupervised minor on a flight alone. Each airline has different age requirements, rates and procedures so you will want to check with the specific airline so you don’t have an unwelcome surprises to deal with. My brother in law bought tickets on Delta for his 14 year old to fly cross country but when she arrived at the airport and found out that Delta requires the traveling youngster to be at least 15 years of age. As a result her father had to purchase a new ticket, at a higher price because it was purchased last minute and now will also lose the cancellation fee on the original ticket. His daughter had done this trip alone a number of times in the past but never on Delta, and the thought that there would be different age requirements with different airlines never crossed his mind.

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