Wondering how old a baby has to be to fly? Most airlines will let you travel with a newborn as young as seven to fourteen days old, though some require a doctor’s note. I personally waited until Jonáš was almost two before our first flight, but you really don’t have to hold off that long.
Before an early departure, it’s a good idea to talk the trip over with your pediatrician, who can assess your baby’s health. Don’t forget the paperwork either, because even a one-week-old newborn needs their own passport to travel abroad. Without it, you’ll have a hard time getting checked in at the counter.
Below I’ve broken down the detailed age rules for selected airlines and doctors’ recommendations. You’ll also learn how to prepare for long flights with a tiny baby and what not to overlook while planning.
TL;DR
- Minimum age by airline: Most carriers let you board with a child older than 14 days, Ryanair accepts 8 days, and KLM has no limit at all.
- What pediatricians think: Doctors advise waiting until the baby is 2 to 3 months old, mainly because of an immature immune system and airport germs.
- Infant fees: A child under 2 flies on your lap for a fixed fee, which in 2026 is €25 with Ryanair and around €27 with Wizz Air.
- Difficulty by age: Babies usually sleep through the flight, while the toughest passengers tend to be toddlers between one and two, because they don’t want to sit still.
- Health risks: Flying with blocked sinuses and a heavy cold isn’t recommended, as it can cause severe ear pain during the plane’s descent.
- EU legislation 2026: New rules require airlines to seat children under 14 next to their accompanying adult free of charge.
- Liquids at airports: Many airports with new CT scanners now allow larger liquids, but plenty of terminals still enforce the strict 100 ml limit — always check before you travel.
10 Things You Need to Know
1. Minimum flying age for each airline
💡 Tip: Before you even start choosing specific tickets, always carefully check the age limits on the official website of your chosen airline. The rules vary wildly between carriers and are decided purely by each airline’s business and safety policies.
If you look at classic full-service carriers, they tend to be fairly generous toward little travelers. For example, KLM has no minimum age at all, so a newborn can fly with them practically straight after birth. Airlines like British Airways or United Airlines, on the other hand, will only let you board with a baby older than seven days.
With low-cost carriers, the rules are noticeably stricter, since they try to minimize any risk on board. The hugely popular Ryanair carries children older than eight days, while Wizz Air and easyJet set a strict limit of 14 days after birth. If you tried to board with a younger child, the staff simply won’t let you onto the plane.
Some airlines have very specific rules, especially charter carriers that fly to most holiday destinations. Many won’t carry babies within the first 48 hours after birth at all, and for children aged 48 hours to seven days they require a special form signed by a doctor. Here’s a clear table of the most common carriers for 2026.
| Airline | Minimum age for travel | Specific conditions |
|---|---|---|
| KLM | No limit | A newborn can fly practically from birth with no restrictions. |
| Smartwings | From 48 hours | Up to 7 days of age only with a completed medical form. |
| British Airways | From 7 days | No further special conditions for newborns. |
| United Airlines | From 7 days | No further special conditions or documentation. |
| Ryanair | From 8 days | Children younger than 8 days are strictly not carried. |
| Wizz Air | From 14 days | A very strict limit with no exceptions. |
| easyJet | From 14 days | A very strict limit that applies to all flights. |
2. What pediatricians say about the first flight and why they recommend waiting
💡 Tip: Even though airlines will let you fly just a few days after birth, pediatricians see things differently and recommend waiting until the baby is two to three months old. This cautious advice is based on purely medical and preventive reasons.
The main issue isn’t actually the time in the air or the slightly reduced cabin pressure. The biggest risk is a newborn’s immature immune system and the utterly unsuitable environment of huge airport halls. Just imagine the enormous mix of viruses and bacteria circulating in air-conditioned spaces that tens of thousands of people from all over the world pass through every day.
The second important factor is catching any congenital defects early. During the first weeks of life, a baby can develop hidden heart or lung problems that lower cabin pressure could dangerously worsen. That’s why doctors prefer the child to have had at least their first thorough check-ups.
If family reasons mean you really must fly earlier, plan your trip as thoughtfully as possible. Try to minimize time spent in crowded transit halls and be extra careful about hand hygiene. A baby carried in a wrap facing the parent is also better protected from coughing fellow passengers than a baby in an open stroller.
3. Flying with a newborn vs. a toddler and how the difficulty changes
💡 Tip: Forget the common belief that the worst thing is traveling with a tiny newborn. Experienced mums on forums agree almost unanimously that they’d choose flying with a baby over a toddler any day.
A baby up to around six months old is the absolute golden age for travel. The child isn’t crawling yet, doesn’t run off anywhere, and sleeps through most of the flight to the soothing white noise of the engines. Breastfeeding or bottle-feeding then easily solves both the ear-popping problem and any boredom during the flight.
The turning point comes between six and twelve months, when the baby starts crawling and wants to explore the world. At this age you can’t just keep them in one place, and uncomfortable motion sickness often starts to appear. Parents often call an ergonomic carrier a lifesaver, since you can pace up and down the aisle with it and reliably rock the baby to sleep.
The absolute peak of difficulty is the age between one and two. A toddler can already walk and has a huge need to move, but you still can’t reason with them that they now have to sit down and keep the seatbelt on. On top of that, at this age the child still flies on your lap, which means a squirming, tantrum-throwing 13-kilo toddler feels really heavy over a three-hour flight.
| Age group | What to realistically expect from the flight | Best strategy for parents |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 6 months | Sleeps a lot, won’t run off, easily soothed by feeding. | Book a bassinet for long-haul flights. |
| 6 to 12 months | Starts exploring, first motion sickness may appear. | Pack a carrier for aisle walks and spare clothes. |
| 1 to 2 years | Needs movement, can’t sit still, can’t be reasoned with. | Prepare a huge stash of varied toys and snacks. |
| 2 to 4 years | Has their own seat, can be negotiated with and things explained. | Ration activities gradually and keep the tablet as a lifeline. |
| 5 years and up | Can carry a small backpack and understands airport processes. | Keep them busy with films, a favorite game, and their own comfy pillow. |
4. Where to go on your first trip with a child and how long a flight to choose
💡 Tip: If you’re flying with your child for the very first time, forget the heroics and romantic dreams of wild, exotic destinations on the other side of the world. Always treat the first flight as a kind of test run, where you need to find out how your little one reacts to airports, noise, and pressure changes.
Your ideal first destination should meet a few absolutely crucial criteria for your peace of mind. Choose places you can reach with the shortest possible flight, ideally within two to three hours. From most major European hubs you can easily reach all of Italy, the Spanish coast, the Balearic Islands, Greece, or popular Bulgaria.
On such a short trip you can keep the child relatively calm more easily, you’ll manage to feed them, and they’ll probably even nap for a while. Also avoid destinations with a big time difference, because a child’s circadian rhythm is incredibly fragile. While an adult gets over jet lag somehow, a small child’s disrupted internal clock can wreck the entire first week of your holiday.
Also think about accessible, quality healthcare right at your destination. Europe is absolutely golden in this respect and offers huge peace of mind. If you plan to rent a car at your destination, don’t forget to read up on the local car seat laws in advance. In Italy, for example, a car seat is mandatory for children under 150 centimeters tall, while in Spain children under 135 centimeters must ride in the back seat, with fines of around €300.
5. Direct flight vs. connection with a small child
💡 Tip: When choosing tickets for your first trip with a small child, there’s one unwritten and absolutely golden rule. Always pay extra for a direct flight and steer well clear of any connections. Connecting flights simply double the logistical difficulty of the trip.
Every connection means two take-offs and two landings, which puts double the strain on sensitive little ears and doubles the risk of pain. Instead of settling your child at the hotel after the first flight, you have to wake them, get them off the plane, and go through a stressful trek across a giant transit hall to the next flight.
Then there’s the constant risk of delays. If the first flight is even slightly late, you risk simply missing your connection with a crying child in your arms. You’ll then have to spend long hours, or even a whole night, on benches in the terminal, which is every parent’s nightmare.
At the same time you’re constantly hauling the stroller and hand luggage through security checks. If you have the choice, it’s better to drive two hours longer to a farther airport that offers a direct flight than to take two connecting flights.
6. Colds, infections, and when it’s better to postpone the flight
💡 Tip: Ear pain is probably the biggest fear of every flying parent. It occurs when the cabin pressure changes rapidly and doesn’t equalize quickly enough through the Eustachian tube.
It’s important to know that descent is much worse and more painful for the ears than take-off itself. As prevention against blocked ears and pain, plain swallowing works best. With babies you solve it with the breast, a bottle of milk, or a pacifier, while with toddlers and older children drinking from a bottle with a straw or chewing a sweet works great.
But if the child has a heavy cold and a blocked nose, things get dramatically more complicated. The Eustachian tube doesn’t work properly and the pressure has no way to equalize naturally, which leads to enormous pain. Experienced parents therefore advise using a good nasal spray before take-off and again just before descent begins, and for the smallest children, taking a nasal aspirator on board too.
The decision on whether to fly with a child with a cold at all should always be discussed with your pediatrician before departure. Especially with an acute middle ear infection, a fever, or shortly after any ear surgery, doctors strictly forbid flying, because there’s a real risk of a ruptured eardrum.
7. How to plan the flight around your child’s sleep
💡 Tip: Good timing can turn a stressful experience into a fairly relaxed trip. Many parents try to buy tickets so that the time spent in the air covers the child’s usual daytime nap.
Lukáš and I deliberately chose our first flight with Jonáš for exactly his afternoon nap time. On the way out it worked out fantastically and he happily slept through a big part of the trip. On the way back, though, our flight picked up an annoying delay, the whole painstakingly worked-out sleep plan fell apart, but even so Jonáš handled it completely fine and with a smile. It just confirms that children are often far more adaptable than our careful plans.
A big topic on online forums is managing sleep on long-haul flights. You’ll often come across advice recommending melatonin, but here you have to be extremely careful. Experts strongly warn against giving melatonin to children under two, because there’s no reliable scientific evidence for it.
For older children, sleep aids should only be considered after a thorough consultation with your pediatrician, and ideally tested out at home first. In some children these products have a paradoxical effect and, instead of calming them, wind them up into hyperactivity. Finding that out ten kilometers above the ocean is definitely not an experience you want.
8. Vaccinations and exotic destinations with children
💡 Tip: Traveling to far-flung, exotic places with very small children carries specific risks that you don’t have to worry about at all in Europe. Tropical diseases and different hygiene standards require extra preparation and careful vaccination planning.
Doctors usually recommend waiting for trips to Asia or Africa until the child has at least the basic set of routine vaccinations. On top of that, many popular exotic destinations require special travel vaccines that can’t be given to very young infants. Always book an appointment at a travel medicine clinic well in advance.
Another huge argument for putting off the exotics with babies is the level of local healthcare. While in Spain or Italy you’ll find top pediatric care on every corner, on remote islands in Thailand getting to a doctor can be a huge problem. And with small children, a health situation can escalate within just a few hours.
If you do decide on a distant trip, never skimp on quality insurance. Always get comprehensive travel insurance for your child right from birth and definitely consider trip cancellation cover too. Children have an incredible talent for spiking a high fever exactly the night before an early departure to your dream holiday.
9. The tricky problem of a second birthday during the trip
💡 Tip: The moment the second birthday hits, the fun of cheap flying ends for parents and the hard bureaucratic and financial reality begins. From the airlines’ point of view, a two-year-old now needs their own seat and you pay the full, or only slightly reduced, adult fare for it.
The biggest trap for parents lurks when the child celebrates their second birthday right in the middle of the holiday. On the way out they still fly as an infant on your lap for a fixed fee, but on the day of the return flight they’re already two and need their own full-price ticket. Many booking systems can’t handle this properly, so you have to carefully verify how the airline deals with it, so you don’t have to pay huge sums at the airport for an on-the-spot seat purchase.
Although children under two can fly on your lap, safety experts at the FAA actually don’t recommend this at all. The safest place for a child on a plane is an approved restraint system, not an adult’s lap. In strong, unexpected turbulence an adult simply doesn’t have the physical strength to hold the child in their arms.
If you want your child under two to have their own seat for safety, you have to buy a full adult ticket and bring a certified car seat on board, which is always placed in the window seat. There’s also the certified CARES harness system, which some airlines accept for children from one year old, but you must always check with the specific carrier in advance.
10. How to adjust your expectations to your child’s age
💡 Tip: When flying with kids, your expectations and strategies have to keep evolving. What worked six months ago will most likely be a total disaster today. The key is not to stubbornly cling to your home rules and to know how to improvise.
Our own experience just confirms it. On the flight to Paris our little one absolutely refused to be buckled up during take-off and landing, which meant huge stress and tears. By our last flight, though, it wasn’t a problem at all and he fastened the belt perfectly calmly. By the way, Lukáš and I swear by our Joolz Aer travel stroller, which we fly with mostly out of major hubs, most often with Ryanair.
With toddlers and preschoolers on board, the era of tablets kicks in fully. Even the strict American Academy of Pediatrics admits that using screens to keep a child entertained on a long trip is perfectly fine. But the golden rule from flight attendants is clear: don’t pull out all your trump cards right after boarding. Rotate activities every twenty minutes — start with books, then bring out new, unseen toys, and keep the tablet as your ultimate weapon for the worst crisis before landing.
The changes in 2025 and 2026 also bring new processes at airports. Many airports now have new CT scanners, which are great news. At these you can take liquids over 100 ml, up to a volume of two liters, and you don’t have to take them out of your bag at all. But be very careful — plenty of terminals still enforce the old strict rule of a transparent bag and bottles up to 100 milliliters, so always check the specific airport before you fly.
Practical summary and approximate prices
To give you a better idea of the financial side of flying with the little ones, I’ve put together an overview of current fees and services for 2026. The amounts may vary slightly depending on the exchange rate and the specific route, but you can safely use them as a rough guide.
- Infant fee (Ryanair): €25 per child under 2 for one way.
- Infant fee (Wizz Air): around €27 one way (varies dynamically).
- Infant fee (full-service carriers): usually 10% of the adult fare.
- Bassinet: the bassinet itself is usually free, but you often have to pay a high fee for a preferred bulkhead seat.
- Unaccompanied minor service (Smartwings): from €85 one way for children aged 6 to 11.
- Family seating (new EU regulation): seating a child under 14 next to an accompanying adult must, by law, be completely free for the family.
Where to go next
If you’re interested in more practical details and specific procedures for traveling with small children, don’t miss our comprehensive guides:
- Flying with kids: the complete guide
- Taking a stroller on a plane
- Car seat on a plane
- Travel first-aid kit: what to pack
- Croatia with kids
Frequently asked questions
When can a baby fly for the first time?
It depends on the airline’s rules. While KLM has no minimum age and Ryanair requires the baby to be 8 days old, Wizz Air and easyJet will let you board only with a child older than 14 days. However, pediatricians generally recommend waiting until the baby is 2 or 3 months old due to their immature immune system.
Do children’s ears hurt on a plane?
Yes, changes in pressure can cause pain, especially during the descent before landing. The best prevention is swallowing, so it’s recommended to give small children milk from a bottle, breastfeed them, or offer them a pacifier exactly when the plane starts descending.
Can a child with a cold fly on a plane?
A severe cold and blocked sinuses are a huge problem on a plane because they prevent natural pressure equalization, which leads to sharp ear pain. Before the flight, it’s therefore recommended to use a nasal spray and aspirator, but for acute infections you should always consult with a pediatrician.
What if my child turns 2 during the holiday?
This is a logistical trap. On the outbound flight, the child still flies as an infant on your lap, but on the day of the return flight they’re already two years old, so by law they need their own full seat and their own ticket. Always check this detail with the airline before purchasing tickets.
Can I give my child sleeping medication on a plane?
Child sleep experts strongly warn against giving melatonin and sleeping medications to children under two years old. For older children, such an approach must be consulted with a doctor in advance, because in some children these medications can have a paradoxical effect and actually make the child very agitated.
Do you pay full price for a child on a plane?
Children under 2 years old flying on a lap pay a fixed fee (around €25 to €27 with low-cost carriers) or approximately 10% of the fare price with network carriers. Once the child turns two, they require their own seat and you pay the full or only slightly reduced adult ticket price.
Will we sit together on the plane?
New European rules approved in 2026 require airlines to seat children under 14 years old next to their accompanying adult free of charge. So you no longer need to worry that the airline’s algorithm will separate you from your small child just because you didn’t pay for seat reservations.
Tips and Tricks for Your Vacation
Don’t Overpay for Flights
Search for flights on Kayak. It’s our favorite search engine because it scans the websites of all airlines and always finds the cheapest connection.
Book Your Accommodation Smartly
The best experiences we’ve had when looking for accommodation (from Alaska to Morocco) are with Booking.com, where hotels, apartments, and entire houses are usually the cheapest and most widely available.
Don’t Forget Travel Insurance
Good travel insurance will protect you against illness, accidents, theft, or flight cancellations. We’ve had a few hospital visits abroad, so we know how important it is to have proper insurance arranged.
Where we insure ourselves: SafetyWing (best for everyone) and TrueTraveller (for extra-long trips).
Why don’t we recommend any Czech insurance company? Because they have too many restrictions. They set limits on the number of days abroad, travel insurance via a credit card often requires you to pay medical expenses only with that card, and they frequently limit the number of returns to the Czech Republic.
Find the Best Experiences
Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace where you can book guided walks, trips, skip-the-line tickets, tours, and much more. We always find some extra fun there!
