18 Jun Surviving an Overnight Flight with Kids
If you travel enough, sooner or later you’ll wind up taking an overnight flight. The dreaded red eye. When you’re an adult traveling alone, it’s no big deal. When you’re a parent traveling with kids, it can be nightmarish.
Assuming you have no other flight options, here are a few things you can do to make the experience as painless as possible.
Get good seats
Many people think bulkhead seats are best for sleeping. I disagree. In my experience, this row is either near the galley or the bathrooms. In other words: noisy and busy all night long. I also avoid the non-reclining back row of the cabin. A row with a window seat is a good choice, since kids can lean on it, but if you have more than one kid, and they’re like mine, they’ll fight over it. Negotiate who sits where in advance to avoid in-flight tears.
Wear soft clothes
On overnight flights, I’ve seen parents escort their kids to the bathrooms to change them into pajamas. This is obviously nuts. Instead, just dress them in soft, nonbinding clothing that they can sleep in – like loose leggings or sweatpants. Do the same yourself if you can bear to look that frumpy. There’s a time and a place for denim, and trust me when I tell you that this is definitely not it.
Eat breakfast
When the flight attendants offer food before landing, it’s going to feel like 3am to you. Make sure your kids eat it anyway. If you can’t stand to wake them up, grab their food and stash it in your bag. A little juice and carbohydrates will give your kids the energy they need to survive the process of landing, collecting your luggage, and getting where you’re going.
Say uncle
On a recent flight from San Francisco to London, my kids settled into their seats, pulled down their eyeshades, and tried to fall asleep. My 13-year-old daughter eventually drifted off, but my 11-year-old son just couldn’t. Every 15 minutes, he would poke me in the ribs and whisper, “I can’t sleep!”
After about two hours of this, I let him stop trying because it was that or resort to infanticide. I was pretty wound up by this point too, so we both sat up, took an ibuprofen, and watched movies for the rest of the flight.
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