Handy Travel Tips: Aeroplane

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Intro

As you may know if you follow us already or read some of my other holiday blogs, we recently travelled to Cyprus to celebrate my best friend getting married. It was also Amelia’s first time on a plane and to say I was nervous about it was probably an understatement.

I’d seen so many travel bloggers online saying that travelling with a 12-18 month old is horrific… but I’m hear to tell you we either got very lucky, or being organised completely paid off!

Our flight was 5 hours from Newcastle to Paphos with (luckily) no delays. Even though I wasted so much energy being nervous about it, everything worked out okay. Amelia slept, played, walked around and we made it though!! 🥳

I could actually feel the relief as I stepped off the plane… we had survived! I’m going to share to you everything we did, to make the aeroplane as easy as possible.

Getting settled before take off

Being Prepared

First things first, the best way to survive is by being prepared. When I was thinking about how to structure this blog I googled “How to be prepared” and the answer made me chuckle. I’d inadvertantly ticked every item off the checklist definition and found the perfect way to explain what we did to survive

To be prepared, anticipate potential needs and proactively take steps to address them. This can involve planning for emergencies, gathering essential supplies, learning new skills, and staying informed about potential risks. Building an emergency kit, creating a family communication plan, and getting involved in community preparedness initiatives are also crucial steps.

“Anticipate potential needs and proactively take steps to address them”

The bag – I knew I was going go need to maximise the space but be practical because we would be wrestling whatever we were carrying, with a small human, experiencing something for the first time who would not be reasoned with. Combined with the fact, that since our home leg was with TUI and they kindly don’t offer any additional compensating weight or luggage items for lap infants on flights ( only if they’re part of a package) I was already restricted. In my head I decided 1 carry on bag (for my bridesmaid dress if nothing else), 1 personal item backpack (which I could stack on my case) and the travel stroller would be the maximum we could balance with Amelia. I settled for my IT Luggage 4 wheel case like this one and this fab rucksack from Primark.

With a few weeks until the flight, Amelia started getting more and more mobile and independant, and I was feeling more and more anxious about the flight. I quickly realised that being a lap infant was never going to work for 5 hours and I had to do something about it, so we bit the bullet and got her, her own seat. Jet2 were so amazing to deal with and the customer service lady on the phone talked me through everything and even refunded me the cost of the lap infant.

Since Amelia is also still in a phase to throw everything she’s finished with, I grabbed her a seat extender which was under £5 on Shein. I thought if nothing else it might stop me picking as much up from the floor and protect the seat from her snack crumbs, and it worked amazingly well. She napped on us and not the seat but it did help to contain her toys and mess really well.

“Planning for emergancies”

If anyone knows my daughter, you’ll know she is famous for her blow out nappies and changes of clothes. My typical changing bag will have at LEAST 3 changes of clothes so I was pretty nervous about travelling light. I opted to go with my usual and packed a drawstring bag with 3 outfits (a mix of hot and cold weather), 4 nappies, a full pack of wipes and a brand new pack of antibac wipes. In the handluggage case I also packed all of our Pjs for the evening, her sleeping bag and a good wad of spare nappies just in case the main cases went missing or we got delayed.

Speaking of a missing case, there was no way I was letting my bridesmaid dress and accessories out of my site so they got firmly packed into the hand luggage case too.

One rookie error I did make was putting Amelia’s meds (calpol, neurofen, antihistamines) into the hand luggage as we had these taken off us at security, something about the calpol and neurofem triggering a test alarm (even though they were brand new and unopened) and the antihistamines being over the 100ml limit. This was sort of an error on my behalf, I read on the airport website that meds must be in your hand luggage and for children didnt count towards your limit however I think it was a complete joke that 3 brand new bottles of medicine for a baby were throw away, and have since put in a complaint and asked for a refund. I’m still waiting to hear back!

With limited space in hand luggage, I really had to think about what I needed and what I didn’t so I also packed Dan’s swim shorts and a UV costume for Amelia just to make sure she could at least have something to do if we lost the cases.

“Gathering essential supplies”

Lots Of Snacks

This is so important… and when you think you have enough add more to your bag, haha!

We set up her snacks in this AMAZING snack box so she had plenty of variety. Amelia loves her fruit so she had apples, blueberries, raspberries, easy peeler and pear. We added some yog covered strawberries, crackers, cheese triangles, white chocolate fingers snapped up (so they look like more), rice cakes, crisps, heinz biscotti and freeze dried strawberry & apple.

“Building an emergancy kit”

Rucksack Full Of New Toys

Shein again was an amazing resource for toys and sensory items.

“Creating a family communication plan”

One boarding first, one boarding last

Well this was the plan anyway… we were checked through so quickly with no waiting at the gate that we didnt have time, which also worked in our favour. The flight was boarded and away ahead of time. It made me feel a bit rushed.

The strategy is the first person takes the bags and prepares the seats, the second entertains the toddler and lets them walk about and burn off energy until the very last moment. The idea is the child isn’t sat around waiting forever and would probably work much better with a larger plane or a delayed boarding.

Coming home we boarded last, which was a bit of a nightmare as we were literally the last 3 on the plane and there was very little room for our bags. However we did manage to get her to eat her dinner in the airport and keep her walking around as muchbas possible so that when we boarded the plane she was ready to sleep.

Walking Up And Down The Aisle

On the way out, Amelia started to get pretty restless about 4 hours in, but I think all of the adult passengers were at this point so I can hardly blame her! We took a couple of laps of walking up and down the plane for a change of scenery and talked to some friends who were on the same flight. Amelia made herself friends with some of the elderly passengers on the aisle seats.

“Learning New Skills”

Embrace The Carnage

I think this was harder for us as we don’t like to disrupt other people, we’re pretty consciencous people! But just accepting it was going to be carnage and embracing that it would be tricky made it a whole lot easier to cope with.

“Getting involved in community preparedness initiatives”

Lucky for us so many people on the flight were friends, family of friends or travelling with small children too, that it really made the difference, especially as we were all sitting pretty close together.

We all entertained each others kids and made a fuss of them so it helped to pass the time. A lot of the babies knew each other so they got to see their friends and not just kept stuck in the row. I’m sure had we got stuck, we could have swapped toys and excess snacks but luckily we didn’t hit that point.

During the final hour, the adults on the plane were also getting pretty restless never mind the babies so it made it a little more challenging to walk around and distract them. We were lucky that lots of people we didnt know interacted with the babies anyway which was so so helpful. None of the babies on the plane really created fuss which was amazing considering how many of them were flying for the first time.

Final Approach

So that wraps up how we survived our first flights to Cyprus and back. If anything I hope this blog helps you feel less anxious too ❤️

Love, Jo-Anne x

P.S. I’ve set up a ‘Buy me a coffee‘ link which can be found here if you find my content useful ❤️

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