Price is a top priority for us. It is where we spend the most money on the least enjoyable part of family travel. However, price is not everything. We’d like to offer a few suggestions for other things to consider when researching and purchasing your flights.
- Dates
- Fridays, weekends, and Mondays are a bit more expensive in general but they might allow your family to maximize your days off-to-trip ratio.
- Does your family need a whole day before the trip to pack or a whole day after the trip to decompress before going back to work and school?
- Duration
- US to Europe are long flights, often with layovers on the east coast; a few hours quicker might be worth the extra cost
- Flight hours with young kids can be easier than layover hours with kids whereas big kids can take walks and explore a bit, making layovers less stressful than wrangling a 3 year old for four hours like we did once.
- Departure/arrival times
- What time would you have to wake up to make an international flight departing at 7:30am? How might that affect the kids?
- Upon arrival, will you be able to check into hotel/rental?
- Seating arrangements
- With young children and all their stuff, window seats has worked well for us
- Sitting together can be good for young kids (“I want mom!”) but maybe big kids can practice their “independence” and give parents some time together by sitting elsewhere on the plane
- Open jaw
- The average of round trip tickets to the arrival and departure cities, these can save hours if not days depending on your itinerary.
- Fees and taxes
- resources we listed here show total cost for tickets. Not all do.
- prices can vary wildly when adding taxes and fees for baggage, seat selection,and boarding preference
- Other (not usually on our list but maybe yours)
- economy vs. business vs. first class (we have only ever flown economy)
- airlines (we have few loyalties but do get extra miles when using United)
- refundable vs nonrefundable (we tend to go cheap and go with nonrefundable)
- travel insurance (so far only for Dan’s solo trip to Vietnam in 2009; we really should look into this more going forward)
- media, meals, and other amenities (we bring our own videos and our own snacks)
Sometimes price and money is a sensitive subject. (We only include dollar amounts because we think it will better inform your decisions.) But it’s important for everyone in the family to understand that family travel is a privilege and comes with certain costs which need to be considered when planning a family trip.
Kids 10+ can use a search engine and might be able to contribute to the research. Give them a budget and let them follow prices and report back to the family. The goal here is not to save every nickel in order to suffer through any flight, it’s to find the right balance for your family.
Family Discussion topic: Would you pay $100 more per ticket for a flight that was 4 fewer hours in duration? Would you choose a 6:30am departure time in a foreign city in order to pay $100 less per ticket?
There are no “right” or “wrong” answers. We don’t always agree ourselves. That’s why we have family discussions. You and your family will have to decide what is best for you.
Talk soon,
Dan & Betsy