Tips for easy air travel with kids.

One of the biggest questions we get is how do you travel by air with two young kids and basically never stress over it. Well, we've consolidated our top tips for traveling by plane with a couple kids in this post after a couple dozen flights.

Start 'em young, fly with your kids early.

Our biggest piece of advice for how to easily travel with kids is to start early. Not newborn early, but around 4 years old. We found that simply experiencing the air travel experience as a kid at this age can be an adventure in and of itself. There's also some whole-family benefits to traveling with kids under certain ages, which we'll get in to later in these tips for flying with kids. While it may not be something a family can do often when kids are this young, we suggest trying to take one airline trip around this age range maybe once every 18 months. It can be a great excuse to go visit relatives who live too far away to drive. Trust us, 12 hours in the car with kids of this same age is way worse than finding an affordable flight that might take 2.5 hours, and given all the budget airlines these days, most of the top 50 metro markets in the USA have options to fly more affordably with kids than ever. We found flights on several budget (and more mainstream) airlines to visit our extended family in Texas that after considering mileage and gas were equal if not cheaper than driving.

Grab a bite.

We stumbled in to this one, but we found that timing up flights to just after breakfast or lunch time gave our kids something to focus on before air travel. This seems so simple, but having our kids know they'll get a quick bite to eat at one of their favorite places after going through security makes the process of waiting on our flight tremendously easier. Since we never want to miss a flight with or without kids, we always get through security relatively early and often find ourselves with at least half an hour before boarding begins. How do we fill that time up without the kids getting restless or anxious, and while keeping them off devices for a bit longer? Easy, they love a quick turkey sandwich from our favorite sandwich shop or nuggets from Chik-Fil-A ahead of a flight. We're not talking a fancy or expensive meal, just something to do while waiting for boarding to begin with our kids. It calms every one down, eats up the time with ease, and also lets us as parents chill out for at least 10 minutes or so after what can sometimes be a stressful experience in security. Try this if you don't already do this with your kids at the airport, it has made our experience with kids while waiting on a flight much easier than before we did this every time we take a flight with kids.

Kids must carry their own bag while traveling via air.

This tip for traveling by plane with kids is as much about personal responsibility as it is making the experience easier on parents. Being fortunate enough to travel by air as a kid needs to come with at least some level of being taught something important in life, and we've found that requiring our kids to carry a bag of their own while flying is a great way to remind them that they must be responsible for their own things. We often fly only with "personal item" sized bags to save money, as most budget airlines allow all passengers, including small children, to carry something around the size of a backpack for no added fee. For the 4 of us, that means that even on the most base fares from the true budget airlines, we can take 4 backpacks free and clear. Even for a 3 to 4 night trip, we're able to make 4 backpacks enough. Taking more bags that that has sometimes caused us more problems then it's helped, as only having 1 backpack per person forces both us as parents and the kids to decide what do we really need on this trip. It's always a great way to tell the kids they only have so much space for their things, and easily cuts down on arguments over which toys or items they can or cannot take with them. It also saves time at security when each of us is only throwing one bag on the conveyor. Most importantly, our kids must carry their own bag if we're only taking 1 per person, and they must keep up with it the entire time. If they want to take a rolling bag when we're on an airline that allows for carry-on sized bags, they must roll it themselves. We started this with both kids as soon as they were 5 years old, and we've never looked back.

That's a bit matchy-matchy.

Traveling with kids at the airport, or anywhere for that matter, can be stressful on parents in regards to just keeping up with them. Our kids are 19 months apart, and fortunately look a lot a like, so they're not too hard to spot when they're together, but we've found that putting them in matching clothes makes them even easier to spot in a crowded airport. While we don't always make them wear identical clothing items, we at least keep it close. They stand out in a crowd when together, and if separated, they're easily able to tell an adult what their sibling is wearing, because they're wearing it too.

Family boarding perk while traveling with kids.

Don't even think about paying for priority boarding when traveling with younger children, you'll get it for free with most airlines. While Southwest is most famously known for offering family boarding after their Group A zone if anyone in your party is 6 or under, we've found that almost all airlines that don't require seat assignments prior to boarding allow parents traveling with younger children to board together and early, typically after all premium seat and priority boarding passengers have been called. This will guarantee you sit together as a family, even if you're on one of the budget airlines without seat assignments. Airlines and flights that have complimentary select-your-seats ahead of boarding could in theory benefit from priority boarding if traveling with kids, but we've found it very unnecessary.