My wife and I are expecting our third child in late September — or possibly any day I suppose. We’re really quite excited around here. We went on our Babymoon to Aruba back in July, and are now settled in to wait for the little guy to make his appearance.
Continue reading: Booking My Unborn Child’s First Airplane Ticket
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Keep in mind that there is a limit on the number of lap children that can be carried on a flight that varies by the configuration and certification of each individual aircraft. Therefore, waiting until the day of flight to declare a lap child does not always guarantee that they will be able to travel if the quota of lap children has already been reached. Not that this is a major risk, but it is a possibility.
@Sean No, there is not a limit on lap children. Just a limit on the amount of bassinets
Sean -- Sure, that's theoretically possible. But you're more likely to run into issues where your seated on the wrong side of the aircraft for lap children, or in the wrong row, or someone else in the row already has a lap child. (There's at most 1 extra oxygen mask per row, and not all rows have them.)
I covered my experience with some of that in a previous post.
https://onemileatatime.com/flying-lap-children/
This is more about booking revenue tickets for babies.
@DS: this is wrong. For many planes there is a limit of one lap child per three seat row due to the available number of oxygen masks. While this means that the number of lap children is large, it is limited ;).
In addition, for over water flights there is a (much smaller) limitation due to the number of life vests.
@DS - There is absolutely a limit on the number of lap children and each aircraft varies in its limit. The primary limiting factors as Travis mentions in his subsequent comments is the oxygen masks, but there are other factors also. Not something that one usually has to worry about (in all my years working in this industry, I've only ever seen it be an issue once), but it is still a limit nonetheless.
And thanks Sean for sharing your experience. I had never thought about running into the upper bound on the number of lap children per plane. It's kind of a scary thought actually. 🙂
The early name situation could come back to haunt you if the baby is a different sex than predicted early on which can happen (trust me) and cause extra paperwork but does work normally. Interesting stuff.
My understanding of the rules is that on all flights there is a limit of one lap child per row set due to the number of O2 masks in each row. I believe an airline has to limit the number of lap children on overwater flights due to the number of life jackets onboard.
As I fly B6 alot, I checked there rules and they say:
One lap child per adult is allowed. Due to the number of oxygen masks per row, only one lap child is allowed per row of three seats for A321 Core, A320 and E190. The number of lap children per row for A321 Mint is not limited by the number of oxygen masks. In cases of flights that are extended over-water flights, due to the number of spare life vests, JetBlue may have to limit the number of lap children on the flight
http://help.jetblue.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/webisapi.dll?New,Kb=askBlue,case=obj(1939)
We tried the whole lap-baby thing on an AS flight from PDX-LAS...it was hell in heaven. We finally agreed to wait it out until they are 4 or 5 before we put another foot into a gate and board. Of course, YMMV when it comes to babies. Best of luck to ya Travis!
Different a/c have different numbers of O2 masks per row & some alternate per side too. Some have 4, some 5.
And in the UK (at least) if a human travels (not as crew) they are ticketed from the outset, irrespective of DoB.
My offspring never allowed themselves to be put into seats until past the lap child age. They usually rode on my chest in a sling or in my arms with their little faces tucked into my neck. Usually both the baby and I spent most of the flight asleep in a sort of crammed-into-Y embrace. The landing would wake them up a bit and we'd be on our way.
People would occasionally remark about how quiet and cooperative they were. I can't take any credit for that. They were just good kids.
I bought my ticket & boarded on 1st Nov, 2016 from Baltimore to Kansas City, hope to return back on 11th Jan, 2017, with my new born who will be two months. Am expected to pay for additional money for ticket or does the lapchild policy allows me to board with my new born without paying? Pls, Reply urgently
Hello Travis,
Some compagnies are more accommodating than others even for international flights (when you do have to pay a little bit for a lap child).
For example, with Singapore Airline, we managed to book on the phone our tickets from Zurich to Brisbane while I was 6 months pregnant. I told them that I wanted to make sure that I will have a bassinet seat as it's a 24H flight! We new the gender and the name of the futur baby so we gave them but yes we couldn't guess the birth date, so the sale agent just didn't put anything and told us to call when baby will be born!
I tried the same with Emirates and the sale agent just literally made fun of me and said: "but madam, you can't book a plan ticket for someone who is not even born, this is crazy!"
Really unhappy about this experience I wrote an email to Emirates and they answered me that even if their agent was rude he was still right to say that you can't book a plan ticket for an unborn baby!