Pardon my excitement, but I just had a flight that made me happier than any other possible flight experience, even Etihad’s A380 The Residence or Air France’s 777 La Premiere.
In this post:
Traveling with little kids can be really complicated
Having kids is a joy, but it can (obviously) also be challenging, especially when it comes to travel (well, among many other things). I can tell you that as someone who has flown millions and millions of miles, traveling with little kids is like learning to fly all over again. Forget the concept of traveling with only carry-ons, or of having a relaxing, carefree flight experience.
We have two kids — our older son, Miles is now a little over 3.5 years old, while our younger son, Jet, is around nine months old. While we’ve done a lot of short haul travel with Miles, up until recently we’ve largely avoided taking him on long haul journeys, since it just didn’t seem like it would benefit anyone.
We last traveled long haul with him for his second birthday, in the summer of 2024. We had an absolutely amazing time, but the experience — and particularly the flying — was incredibly challenging. Two year olds aren’t exactly great at following instructions, and can be hard to negotiate with.
I specifically remember on that trip that we flew Lufthansa from Athens (ATH) to Frankfurt (FRA), and Miles was being… well, a two year old. There were some other slightly older kids in the cabin who were so well behaved and didn’t make a peep, and I remember saying to Ford “it’s going to be so nice when flying with Miles is like that.”
Well, around 18 months after this trip, we decided that it was time to take Miles on another long haul trip. He has spring break from his preschool, and he’s at such a great age in terms of him listening to us, wanting to be sweet, and actually absorbing things (he now spends all day asking us about… well, everything).
So we decided to book a ski trip with him, and we flew Air France business class from Miami (MIA) to Paris (CDG) to Geneva (GVA). I was still a little apprehensive about the actual flying portion of the trip, since Miles has become a huge aviation geek, I knew he’d be excited, and he’s just very stubborn when it comes to insisting on not sleeping.
I told myself that everything would go great, though Ford thought I was being a little overly optimistic, which I can totally understand. I wasn’t sure if he’d just pass out and be an angel, or if he wouldn’t sleep a wink, and would be a terror the entire flight.
Our incredible Air France business class transatlantic flight
We decided to book the 11:40PM flight from Miami to Paris. That’s way past Miles’ bedtime, and also certainly way past my bedtime. The plan was that Miles would nap on the day of flight, but as you might have guessed, he decided he wasn’t going to nap, because he was too excited.
In the weeks leading up to the flight, I talked to him constantly about it, explaining how we’d have to sleep on the plane, etc. I also tried to explain to him he’d have to follow the rules around the seatbelt sign, listen to flight attendants, etc.
To drive home that point, we started watching safety videos at home, which he became sort of obsessed with, to the point that it became his new favorite “screen time” activity. “Papa, I want to watch a safety a video.” Mmm, okay! He’s particularly a fan of Starlux’s safety video, by the way…
Anyway, I don’t think the flight could’ve possibly gone any better. As we arrived at the airport, he said “papa and dada, I want to sleep.” The thing to know about Miles is that he never, ever, ever wants to sleep. He’s so opposed to sleeping that at night he makes us tell him that he’s not going to sleep, but instead, he’s just “resting.”
Well, we boarded the Air France flight, put on his favorite airplane pajamas, and he was of course overjoyed to be a plane, as always.
He wanted to play with the map, of course, and see where we were going. He then started asking when we’d be able to put on the oxygen masks (the concept of the safety video being about emergencies is lost on him, and that’s fair enough!).
His excitement quickly shifted to… well, I’ll let you see for yourself.
Before the takeoff roll, he was already sound asleep.
The second we took off, I reclined the seat for him. I was worried that he’d wake up and not be able to fall asleep again, but he didn’t even wake up as I put his seat into bed mode.
I woke up about halfway through the flight, and found he was still sound asleep… while literally standing. Hah, essentially the bottom half of his body had shifted so that his feet were on the ground, while the top half of his body was still in a standard reclined position.
So I moved him back, and to my surprise, he still stayed asleep. He finally woke up around 90 minutes before landing as the crew performed the breakfast service. He enjoyed his breakfast, and before we knew it, we were in Paris!
Air France business class is consistently excellent, and the entire experience couldn’t have been better, from the seats, to the food, to the service. In particular, Isabelle was working our section, and she was just so lovely, especially toward Miles.
Jet lag hasn’t at all been an issue either
I figured a successful flight was only our first battle, and the next challenge would be how he’d handle jet lag. Well, to my surprise, it hasn’t been an issue at all.
I think the fact that we ended up landing in Geneva a little after 4PM was perfect. We played outside a bit, had dinner, and then all went to bed, and he slept for 10 hours. If anything, he actually helped me, because I’m a horrible sleeper when I travel, and jet lag gets the best of me. So when I woke up in the middle of the night, rather than getting up, I of course stayed in bed, to make sure he’d be able to continue sleeping as well.
So far, this trip has gone way better than I could’ve possibly expected, and it’s so cool to have a little kid who is at the age where you can travel with him and feel like it’s a super fun experience. Of course every kid is different, but the first half of three years old was challenging (his “threenager” era), while the second half has been absolutely lovely so far.
Of course knock on wood, because let’s see when the next phase comes. In the meantime, I’m grateful for this new phase of fun travel with a little one!
Bottom line
We just took our son on his first long haul flight in around 18 months, and my goodness, what a difference a little time makes. Our last long haul flight with him was very challenging, while this one was a breeze. I was optimistic, but it went better than I could’ve possibly imagined, and he didn’t have a single meltdown, and jet lag hasn’t been an issue.
Every kid is different, but at least in our situation, I’m taking mental note that 3.5 years old is a turning point for easy kid travel. Here’s to hoping it continues, and to many more adventures with him. And of course as usual, Air France business class impressed, so we couldn’t have chosen a better experience for this journey.
To fellow parents, was there also an age that you felt was a turning point in terms of fun travel with kids?
We started aggressively traveling again after both our boys were 4 or over. Once they can be entertained with movies, the long hauls became far easier. From 4-12, we had to adjust our schedule once we were wherever we were visiting ... i.e., longer stays in fewer places, slow down during the day, take time to hang out in parks (which was a great way to meet locals w/ kids). Prior to trips, we liked...
We started aggressively traveling again after both our boys were 4 or over. Once they can be entertained with movies, the long hauls became far easier. From 4-12, we had to adjust our schedule once we were wherever we were visiting ... i.e., longer stays in fewer places, slow down during the day, take time to hang out in parks (which was a great way to meet locals w/ kids). Prior to trips, we liked to get buy-in from the kids on what they wanted to do (even if it meant Paris Disneyland). BTW, great call on skiing in Europe. Cheaper than the US, more atmospheric, and better food. We go to Lech, Austria, year after year. Very atmospheric, huge terrain.
At age 5 our kid started getting really mad in his Polaris seat an hour after takeoff returning stateside from Paris. We were bracing for a meltdown. Turns out he thought he was supposed to be asleep because he remembered the red eye flight to Europe. I then showed him the map and how we were chasing the sun and this was a daytime flight and he could watch all the Bluey he wanted. That solved everything. The United sundae cart helped too.
I'll echo what others said - great job with the timing of that flight. Will be curious what your experience is on the daytime flight back. I presume you're in a X | Parent - Child | Parent confliguration?
Love the video! So great.
My 9mo daughter slept a total of 0 minutes from ord to Heathrow when we went for the Olympics in 2012. Crazy! We had an economy row of four (my wife and I and our daughter and then a random older guy). We apologized to him on boarding and he said to my wife “maam I have 4 kids and you don’t have to worry about me one bit. You just look after yourself and I can help when needed”.
Glad it was smooth!
And happy to see you obviously snagged the 3 bulkhead seats on the 777 (if I understand the image correctly) :)
On a side note - your original post about these seats is slightly incorrect, as the middle seats in the first row of the 2nd cabin of the A350 do no offer the same enlarged foothold. On the 777 there are a total of 8 such seats, but on the 350 there are only six.
Amazing! Hope it was a blast.
Did he do okay with the layover and second flight? I assume ideally direct flights would be easier, but sounds like it was okay!
@ Andrew -- Just a quick layover and connection, and it was totally seamless. He didn't watch any TV on the first flight (by design, so he wouldn't be too amped up), but then we let him watch TV on the connecting flight, which was helpful, given his exhaustion.
Fantastic!
Think you did a great job re the timing of your flight. As I’ve gotten older (and my kids too) I feel that this is often a factor that we don’t pay enough attention too. Late late transatlántics are much better. Kids are tired. Give them an hour or two of food and a movie and they’ll go to sleep. And then you land much later and have far less of the day to navigate....
Think you did a great job re the timing of your flight. As I’ve gotten older (and my kids too) I feel that this is often a factor that we don’t pay enough attention too. Late late transatlántics are much better. Kids are tired. Give them an hour or two of food and a movie and they’ll go to sleep. And then you land much later and have far less of the day to navigate.
Similarly from Australia to the west coast of the USA there are a lot of flights at around 10am. You fly for 15 hours and land at 6am right when you’re ready to bed. Then you have 12 hours at least to stay up to avoid jet lag. If you fly the alternative takeoff at 4/5pm you sleep maybe 6-7 hours of average sleep. Land 130pm and it’s morning time at your origin. Stay up until 10pm and you’re already on your way to beating jet lag.
To Asia I always used to take night flights to maximize time on the ground but have now shifted to day flights. Read, watch a movie and doze and land in the late afternoon. Check into hotel. Have dinner. Swim in the pool and sleep. Rather than land at 6am and feeel groggy (business class is great but it’s still a horrible sleep).