Long-haul flights with The World's Worst Flyer

Onboard our flight from Shanghai to Tokyo on the way home from China

He may look cute... because, well, he is. But I've dubbed Noob "The World's Worst Flyer," because, well, he is! So I was truly dreading the long-haul flights to and from China.

The flights weren't the most fun experience ever, but we all survived. And as it turns out, spending the better part of two full days stuck on an airplane with Noob helped me make some surprising discoveries that should make flying a little easier with him in the future. Although still not easy :)

Surprising Discovery #1: A 14-hour flight is really not that much worse than a 4-hour flight, or even a 2-hour flight.
I was really excited for the flight home from China. After all, the longest leg was "only" 10 hours! Compared to 14 hours for the outbound journey.

I was pretty surprised when the time seemed to drag just as much as it had on the first flight. Really, the flights were not much harder to handle than, say, the 3-hour flight from Dallas to Miami that I blogged about previously. I had a few more "toys" at my disposal: Meals (nonexistent on domestic flights) could chew up close to an hour of time. Having two aisles made going for "walks" a little easier. The personal video system provided a few minutes of amusement.

I won't say that the time flew by on either flight, but let's put it this way: They were 4-5 times as long as the Dallas-to-Miami flight, but not 4-5 times harder to get through. Not even close.

Surprising Discovery #2: Noob is not really The World's Worst Flyer. He's just The World's Worst Sleeper-on-Planes.
During our previous flights, I've noticed that Noob had a hard time settling down to sleep, but I was able to make excuses for it: It's not naptime quite yet, or it's past naptime. This is a new and stimulating environment. There are people up and down the aisles at all times to distract him. It's too bright/light. I could probably get him to sleep but the flight is almost over anyway. Etc. etc.

But when you're flying in the middle of the night, you've been in the "new and stimulating" environment for nearly 10 hours (so it's no longer really "new"), everyone else is sleeping... and the kid still takes hours to calm down and fall asleep? That's because he's The World's Worst Sleeper-on-Planes.

Surprising Discovery #3: Naptime (or nighttime) is the worst time for Noob to fly.
We booked our Thanksgiving flights around Noob's naptime, hoping that he'd take a nap and therefore be easier to deal with. But this backfired when he barely slept at all. I was confused at the time, but now I know it's due to Surprising Discovery #2: Noob has a lot of trouble sleeping on planes. Furthermore, when he needs to sleep and doesn't, he gets really cranky and overtired, and then he's even harder to deal with!

As a result, by far our easiest flight on the China trip was our outbound domestic flight, which left at 6:45 AM. Admittedly, it was also the shortest... but I think it helped that Noob (who is a morning person in general) was fresh, rather than being overtired and in need of a nap. As the day went on, he got more tired and harder to deal with.

Surprising Discovery #4: Noob does better without a car seat.
This wasn't a huge surprise, but we opted not to bring Noob's car seat onboard the plane, and he did way better without it. Most notably, when he was tired, he was able to stretch out more and get comfortable. He didn't sleep quite as much as I would have liked (maybe 4 hours on each of the long-haul flights), but it was better than nothing! Not having a car seat also gave him more room to play with his trains, crayons, etc.

So, from here on out... we'll try to book early-morning flights, we'll gate-check the car seat, and we won't be scared of taking long-haul flights!

To car seat or not to car seat

Littles snoozing in her infant seat + Snap-n-Go during a layover in Atlanta (3 months old)

Another key decision point that we make on each of our trips is around car seats. Specifically, should we bring a car seat with us? If yes, should we check it with our bags, gate check it, or bring it onboard?

The answer to the first question has always been straightforward for us: Yes! We have brought a car seat on every single one of our trips. Most of the time, we rent a car on the other end and do a significant amount of driving. Rental car companies do rent car seats, but it's usually expensive (around $10/day), they are not guaranteed to have an appropriate seat when you arrive, and the seat may be in very poor condition. It's much less stressful for us to bring our own.

Once we're at the airport, we do different things with the car seats depending on the situation. Our general rule is that car seats do not get checked with luggage. Reason being, if the car seat gets lost or damaged, we would be stuck in a strange airport with no way to transport our kid. And that would suck. (We do sometimes check it on the way home, since this is less of a concern.)

This means that we've needed an easy way to get the seat to the gate. Car seats are fairly bulky and heavy, so wheels are the way to go:

• Littles was in her infant seat until 10 months of age. In this phase, we traveled with a Snap-n-Go stroller frame. This made it easy to navigate the airport with the car seat.
  


• When she moved out of the infant seat, we initially brought our travel system stroller (Graco Metrolite) and simply stuck her convertible seat in the main part of the stroller. This was much easier than attempting to carry the car seat around the airport. It was not sturdy enough to place Littles in the car seat while we wheeled it around, but we usually had her in a baby carrier anyway. (We use an Ergo.)
  


• After a few trips with this setup, we realized that we were almost never using the stroller anywhere besides the airport. So we started leaving the stroller at home, and purchased a GoGo Kidz Travelmate to attach to the car seat.

Once at the gate, we gate-checked the seat if Littles did not have a seat. But as I explained in a previous post, we opted to purchase a seat for her on every trip past 10 months of age. So when she did have a seat, we brought the car seat onboard. We found that she did really well sitting in it, probably because she was used to it from the car.

Around her second birthday, she discovered the joy of kicking the seat in front of her. Unfortunately, the car seat put her in the perfect position to do just that. She was also starting to do activities that required the use of the tray table, like color, play with Playdoh, and watch DVDs, and her car seat did not allow the tray table to fold out fully. So her last trip in the car seat was at 27 months. These days, she sits directly in the airline seat, which gives her full use of the tray table and prevents seat-kicking.

When Noob came along, he was also in the infant seat until about 10 months of age, so we pulled out the Snap-n-Go again for use with his seat. We continued to use the Travelmate for Littles' seat.

We haven't traveled yet with Noob in a convertible seat, but we plan to put him in Littles' old convertible seat, using the Travelmate. For Littles, we recently purchased a Safety First Go Hybrid Booster seat. It is super lightweight (less than 10 lbs) and folds into a small bag for travel. I think it will be a lot easier to deal with than a second convertible seat on a Travelmate! I'll be sure to post a review of it after we do travel with it for the first time.

Updated July 2011: We now travel with Noob in a convertible seat (Britax Roundabout) on the Travelmate, and Littles in a Go Hybrid booster seat. That combination is very easy to transport! Here is a link to my review of the Go Hybrid Booster.