Before traveling long haul with BBB I googled 'traveling with babies long haul' hoping to find some handy tips. Most of the comments were from people traveling "long haul" of 5 hours. Ha! That's short haul to us. When you live in New Zealand long haul really means looooooong haul. For us it meant 25 hours of flying, one night in Dubai plus many more hours waiting in 4 different airports before and after flights.
Emirates kindly introduced a brand spanking new flight route just two weeks before we flew out of NZ. A world famous route for being the longest non stop flight at 17 hours 20 mins. I kind of figured if we were going long haul we'll we may as well hit it the top so we booked ourselves on the world's longest flight with a 4 month old baby.
With 3 suitcases, 1 Dane, 1 carseat, 1 buggy/pram and the 4 month old BBB we began our long haul journey from NZ to Denmark via Dubai.
My focus was simply getting on the plane. Then I figured what will be will be during the fliight. That's not to say the niggly annoying distracting voice right in the back of my head wasn't perplexed with the mathmatical equation of how the heck to keep a baby entertained for 17 hours on a flight with 300 other people in a confined space.
But we did it. BBB was an amazing traveling companion. We had a bassinet seat (the front rows of economy) and big humming engines which soothed not only BBB but the other babies and children (mainly) to sleep.
Bonus of choosing this flight for us was:
1. it left New Zealand at 9.30pm which is pretty much BBB's bedtime
2. It's one ride. That's just one plane to get on and off and be on the otherside of the world already.
3. We got a cool little polaroid photo from the Emirates Crew as a momento
Highlights of the flight:
1. Emirates Crew
2. Passengers behind BBB complimenting us on an amazing baby post flight (I took this as code for thank feck your baby didn't cry for 17 hours)
3. No poo explosions
Top tips if you're traveling loooooong haul with a baby:
1. You can't get a better, louder or bigger white noise machine than a Boeing-777
2. Take heaps of nappies and changes of clothes for you and baby. But dont go overboard with the other stuff. I packed a big carry on suitcase and touched bugger all in it.
3. Don't worry about the other passengers. You won't be the only one traveling with a child on the flight and you most certainly aren't going to be the only parent on that flight.
Additional random point:
1. Dubai is full of bling.
Just holler if you're traveling long (or short) haul with a baby. I'll do my best to share my wisdom after surviving the world's loooooongest flight with BBB.
