Flying with Children: Our Honest Course Review in 2026

When Lukáš and I decided that Jonášek would take his very first flight, one number was stuck in our heads: 45 minutes. That was exactly how long our son could last in a car seat if he was awake. He hated the baby carrier, hated the stroller too, and ahead of us was a flight from Faro to Vienna over Christmas, when he was not quite two. Flying with children suddenly felt like a huge unknown.

The “Flying with Children” course by Terka from the Cestuj za babku blog landed in our lap at exactly this stage, because she offered it to us to try out and review. The timing felt perfect, since we wanted to be sure that nobody at the airport would tell us we weren’t going anywhere with this stroller or that bag.

We went through the course, we survived the flight, and since then Jonášek and I have racked up plenty more trips. Here is our honest review: what the course actually gave us, where we got stuck, and who we’d recommend it to.

For the record: we didn’t buy the course, we were given access to it by the author in exchange for a review. But everything written here is purely our own experience, and nobody had any say in it.

Summary: is the Flying with Children course worth it?

Short answer: if you’re flying with a child for the first time and on a low-cost airline, then yes. But with one condition, which we’ll spell out below, because it’s exactly the thing we tripped over ourselves.

• What it is: 11 video lessons (just under 80 minutes of video in total) plus extra bonus videos, with texts, links and tables underneath each video.
• Price: around €50 (1,290 CZK), though the author runs discount promotions several times a year.
• Bonuses: cheat sheets for Ryanair, Wizz Air and Smartwings in PDF, a packing list, a “My First Flight” certificate for kids, a section with partner discounts, and the option to ask the author directly.
• Biggest plus: you have in one place what you’d otherwise gather from fifteen airline websites and four forum threads.
• Biggest minus: the pace of the videos. We played them at double speed and still had to look some things up.
• Our verdict: a solid foundation that takes the stress out of a first trip, but it’s not a manual for every situation. Anyone who enjoys researching everything themselves can manage without it.

Why we even considered the Flying with Children course

Jonášek was and still is a great travel companion, but long journeys were never his thing. He could handle the car for 45 minutes max if he wasn’t asleep, and whenever we tried the carrier or the stroller he made it very clear what he thought of it. So a plane was a big question mark for us.

On top of that came the thing every parent probably knows before a first flight. We had no idea what we were allowed to bring for free, whether they’d run our stroller through at the desk, how seating would work when there are three of us, and what would happen if Jonáš decided mid-take-off that he didn’t want that belt on him.

We took up the offer mainly because the course is made by a mum who has genuinely flown dozens of low-cost trips with kids, not by a travel agency. That turned out to be its biggest strength, because what we took away most were those specific real-life notes like “this airline let it slide for us, this one didn’t.”

What you’ll find in the course

The course is split into eleven modules that follow a logical order, from deciding where to fly all the way to what to pack in your carry-on. Each module has a video plus text underneath, and some also come with tables and direct links to airline rules.

Module	Video length	What you’ll take away
When to start flying and where	3:43	From how many months old you can fly and which destinations to choose for a first trip
Travel documents	2:45	ID card vs. passport, express passports, how closely the child needs to match the photo
How to buy tickets	6:26	The difference between an infant and a child over 2, what’s not worth paying extra for on Ryanair
Seats on the plane	4:47	How to get your family seated together for free and what the European recommendation says about it
Baggage allowance for children	5:23	What counts as a baby item and what you get for free with each airline
Stroller, carrier, backpack	5:03	Whether to check in the stroller, bag it, or bring it right up to the plane
Car seat and travel cot	8:08	Why to bring your own seat and how to pack it
Food, drink, first-aid kit	7:59	Liquids for children over 100 ml and what makes it through security
How things work at the airport	12:08	The process from arrival to gate, baby room, priority queues, lounges
How things work on the plane	8:44	Seating for under-2s, the child belt, bassinets, nappy changing
Travel gear	12:02	What to pack for kids in the carry-on and how to keep them busy on the plane

On top of that you get a packing list to download, a “My First Flight” certificate (Jonášek hasn’t appreciated it yet, but with older kids it must be a hit) and a section with private partner discounts. We won’t spell those out here, since they’re meant only for course participants.

💡 Tip: right at the start, download the cheat sheet for your airline. It’s a one-page PDF with dimensions and rules that you save to your phone so you don’t have to look anything up at the desk.

What the course actually helped us solve

The most valuable part for us was the section on baggage and baby items. We found out that with most airlines both the stroller and the car seat go for free, and that this doesn’t just apply to babies but to bigger kids too, which we’d had no idea about. It saved us both money and needless nerves at check-in.

The second thing was seating. With low-cost airlines we’d automatically assumed we’d have to pay extra for seats to sit together. From the course we learned that the system assigns the child to a parent automatically, and that there’s even a European recommendation you can use as an argument. It worked.

The third was the rules for liquids and food. It’s something you picture as a minefield before a trip, when really you just need to know that for small children there’s an exemption from the 100 ml limit, and that rules differ from airport to airport. Nobody in Portugal made a fuss about it for us, but it’s good to know in advance.

And then there’s the fourth thing, which is hard to measure: peace of mind. When we drove to the airport, we knew what to expect, where the nappy-changing table would be and why we were arriving two hours early. Even though we didn’t pay for the course ourselves, the price of around €50 (1,290 CZK) feels defensible for a first trip, even if you only took away half of it.

What slowed us down with the course

Here we’ll be honest, because a review where everything is flawless helps nobody.

The pace of the videos

We had to play the videos at double speed to make them comfortable to listen to. Terka speaks calmly and deliberately, which is fine when you’re folding laundry, but we were tackling the course in the evening after bedtime and wanted to get to the point faster. At 2× it was just right, so just under 80 minutes turned into 40.

The most important information is in the text, not the video

This is our main takeaway, and we have to admit that half the blame is on our side. After the course, Lukáš still couldn’t work out exactly what we were allowed to bring as baby items, and he was digging through airline websites. Meanwhile the table with all the airlines and their allowances had been sitting right there in the course the whole time, just tucked away under a video.

The thing is, we received the course directly and never went through the sales page, where it’s explained that the videos are only one part and that the key dimensions and tables are deliberately in the text (so they can be updated when airlines change their rules, which happens constantly). Terka explained it to us straight away and immediately noted that she’d emphasise it more in the course. We liked that, because she responded within a few hours and without taking offence.

If you do buy the course, take this as our first piece of advice: scroll down below the video. There’s more there than in the video itself.

What we’d have wished for on top

A few things were missing that would have turned a good foundation into a course you keep coming back to:

• Chapters within the videos or a text summary under each lesson, so you could jump straight to whatever you’re dealing with right now.
• “What to do if” scenarios: when a flight is delayed and your routine falls apart, when your child refuses to be strapped in for take-off, when your checked stroller doesn’t turn up.
• More about children around the age of two, because they’re no longer babies who sleep through the whole flight, but not yet at the age where a tablet keeps them busy.

None of this is a dealbreaker, but if we were to recommend the course wholeheartedly, these are the things that simply ought to be there.

How our first flight went

We deliberately planned it as a direct flight, so there’d be no transfer, no luggage moved around, and we wouldn’t have to run through a foreign airport with a tired child. That, in our view, was the best idea of the whole trip.

The second decision was to schedule the flight around Jonášek’s sleep. On the way from Faro to Vienna it worked perfectly: he fell asleep at take-off, and when he woke up he handled it without a problem. We felt like we were in a fairy tale and thought we were genius parents. 😅

The return trip put us in our place. We got delayed, the sleep plan collapsed and Jonáš was awake practically the whole time. And wouldn’t you know it, it was fine. He liked the plane, looked out the window, walked up and down the aisle with us, and in the end it was calmer than 45 minutes in the car.

The only real problem we’ve had in all this time was on the flight to Paris, when Jonáš didn’t want to be strapped in during take-off and landing. Those are the two moments when a child under two has to be attached to you with a child belt, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And of course it was probably the longest strapped-in stretch after take-off of my life — nearly 45 minutes. By our last flight we didn’t even have this problem anymore; he’d let us explain it to him.

And now the good news for all nervous parents, because this is exactly the sentence we needed to hear a year and a half ago: flying is, for us, now the easiest way to get somewhere with a child. At two years old, Jonáš handles it better than the car, better than the train, and incomparably better than any baby carrier.

5 things we’d advise you

This is beyond the course, purely from our own experience:

1. Choose a direct flight, even if it costs a bit more. A transfer with a small child is twice the stress and twice the number of things that can go wrong.

2. Plan the flight around sleep, but don’t rely on it. Assume a delay will come and the plan will fall apart. Ours did, and nothing happened.

3. Take-off and landing are the hardest part, not the flight itself. Have something tried-and-tested ready for those two moments; at two years old we still go for Duplo, but at a year and a half food kept him busiest.

4. Test with a short flight first, because every child is different.

5. Leave yourself a buffer at the airport. Two hours ahead sounds like overkill, but with a child who needs to burn off energy by the window and watch the planes, they fly by terribly fast.

Who we’d recommend the course to, and who not

The course makes sense if:

• you’re flying with a child for the first time and don’t have anyone around to advise you,
• you’re flying with a low-cost airline, where it’s easy to lose out on baggage,
• you don’t want to spend your evenings reading Ryanair’s terms and forum threads,
• you have a child under two, because it’s with infants that the rules are the most numerous and the least clear.

Probably skip the course if:

• you’ve already flown with your child twice or more, because you’ll remember most of it anyway,
• you like researching everything yourself (the information can be gathered for free, it’ll just eat up an afternoon),
• you’re expecting a slickly produced video course. This is honest homemade video from a mum who has been through it all, not a rehearsed studio shoot.

How much the course costs and where to buy it

The Flying with Children course costs around €50 (1,290 CZK) and you’ll find it on the Cestuj za babku website. Access has no time limit and the author keeps adding updates, which you really appreciate with this topic, because airlines change their rules several times a year (Ryanair alone has, in the past year, adjusted both carry-on dimensions and the seat reservation system for children).

💡 Final tip: once you buy the course, go through the texts and tables under the videos first, and only then watch the videos. If we’d done it that way, we’d have saved ourselves an evening of hunting through airline websites.

Where to next

If you’re now planning your first trip with a child, take a look at our other articles too:

• Ryanair baggage: dimensions, weight and what to bring for free
• Wizz Air baggage: carry-on, suitcase and fees
• What you can and can’t take on a plane
• Travel first-aid kit: what belongs in it
• Lofoten with kids: what to see and how to manage it
• Croatia with kids: where to go on holiday

Frequently asked questions