Restrooms Usage - Make your kids use the toilets before boarding the aircraft as they are spacious and much cleaner compared to the aircraft ones! Carry baby wipes as you will need them a lot in-flight for a quick wipe up. Be sure to put them in a place easily accessible to you throughout the flight.

Diapers / Trash - Get a carrier / plastic bag from the crew, to put your garbage in and keep your area clean. Carry fragranced bags to dispose of diapers and put them in the toilet bins.9. Clothes Carry a change of clothes for your child ALWAYS and it is advisable to carry a change of top / t-shirt for yourself too. You NEVER know when you will need it.

Seat Placements - Choose bulkhead seats only if your baby needs a baby bassinet. If not get any other seats in preference. My reason for this is that at the bulkhead seats the armrest cannot be moved, while in normal seats the armrests can go up. This is far better if your baby wants to lie down on the seat with her head on your lap.

Food/Drinks - Carry biscuits, water, juice & snacks for your kids. Also carry milk packets (the UHT small packets) yourself. Airline snacks run out in flight and milk is a shortage very often. The cabin crew should not be blamed if this happens - it's not up to them to bring milk.

Ear Problems - If your baby is on a bottle or breastfeeding, give them the bottle or the breast for take-off & landing. It's the best things for their ears and they will also be relaxed. If your child is big, then carry cotton or ask for earplugs as soon as you board the aircraft. Make use of them for take-off then save them for landing as the crew may not have any fresh ones left by then. This helps the kids tremendously if they don't know how to pop their ears.

Health - If your child has a cold please ensure you have seen a doctor before the flight to check if the child is fit to fly. Even if the doctor says it's OK, please use your judgment. I see kids flying a cold and they really are in a bad state for take-off & landing. It is extremely painful for them if they are all congested & blocked up and they cannot pop their ears. It is very dangerous to their eardrums too!

Milk Bottle / Sippy Cups - If you ask the crew to heat up the baby bottle, please check the temperature of the liquid yourself periodically and don't depend on the crew. They are extremely busy and no-one is free even for 5 minutes to stand by the bottle. Crew can unfortunately forget about your bottle for a long time and most crew in Economy Class are not mothers themselves (as they are very young) so they do not necessarily know the right temperature for a child's feed.Crew are most willing to help you but please remember, they are extremely busy.


Baby Sitting - Since they have to be strapped into the seat for long periods of time, it is a great idea to bring plenty of small, unfamiliar things to distract their attention. Our approach was to have a small backpack filled with interesting new items to discover. Once that had been exhausted, we had loaded a couple of kids videos (educational, of course) on my video i-pod and bought him some child-sized headphones with tiger ears. This worked great and since he normally doesn’t get to watch television he was transfixed.