Flying from Belfast with a baby or toddler

Most of the advice written about this is about surviving the flight. The parts that actually go wrong happen before you board and after you land.

✓ Last checked 20 September 2026 By Oliver Jones Independent — we sell nothing

The two-year cliff

An infant under two travels on an adult’s lap, pays a small percentage of the fare or a flat fee, and has no seat. The day they turn two, they need a full seat at a child fare.

Two things follow that are worth knowing before you book.

The age that counts is the age on the date of travel, both outbound and return. A child who turns two during the holiday needs a seat for the flight home. Airlines check this and will not let it slide.

A lap infant usually has no baggage allowance. Their clothes, nappies and everything else come out of yours. On a flight-only booking with a tight cabin allowance this matters a great deal, and it is one of the clearest cases where a package with included hold baggage works out cheaper than it looks.

Equipment: what travels free

Almost every airline carries the following at no charge, outside your normal allowance:

• a pushchair or buggy, usually taken to the aircraft door and returned there or at the carousel
• a car seat
• a travel cot, on many but not all carriers

Confirm the specifics with your airline before you fly, because the collection point for the buggy is the detail that varies and the one you need to know while standing in the jet bridge with a tired child.

Milk, formula and food through security

These are exempt from the liquids limit in the quantity reasonably needed for the journey. In practice:

• bring it in containers you can open, because you may be asked to taste it
• declare it before screening rather than after
• allow an extra few minutes, which is routine rather than a problem
• powder plus a separate flask of water is the easiest format for formula

Read the full liquids guidance for how the rest of the rules work, and remember the rule at the airport you fly home from may differ.

Ear pressure, which is the one genuine in-flight problem

Babies cannot equalise the pressure in their ears deliberately, and the descent is worse than the climb because the change is faster.

The mechanism that helps is swallowing. A feed, a bottle, a dummy or, for an older toddler, a drink through a straw all work for the same reason. Time it for the descent rather than take-off: the descent begins earlier than people expect, often forty minutes before landing.

Waking a sleeping baby for the descent is a genuine judgement call. Many parents do not, and many babies sleep through it without difficulty.

Timing the flight

The conventional advice is to book around naps. It is reasonable advice and it collides with reality, because the cheap sun flights from Belfast leave early in the morning and the ones that do not are the expensive ones.

A more useful frame: a 06:30 departure means a 03:30 alarm, and with a toddler that is not a flight, it is an expedition. If your dates are flexible at all, paying more for a mid-morning departure buys you a functioning first day of the holiday.

Arrival day is the hard part

This is the section most guides leave out, and it is where the day actually falls apart.

By the time you land you have been awake since before four, cleared two airports and had nothing resembling a meal. Then comes the transfer.

Check the transfer time before you book the hotel. On this site every destination page lists them, because an hour-and-a-half coach with four stops is a completely different proposition from a twenty-minute run. Lanzarote and Ibiza are ten minutes from the terminal. Marmaris is ninety. That is the whole of arrival day in one number.

Private transfers cost more and are worth it on this one occasion, if the budget stretches. No waiting for the coach to fill, no four other hotels first, and a car seat if you ask when booking.

Pack an arrival bag. Nappies, a change of clothes, snacks and one familiar toy, in the bag that stays with you. Hold baggage has a way of arriving last on exactly the day you need it first.