Flying With Kids: Infant Flight Awards

While some airlines offer discounts on cash fares for children, this is generally not the case for award tickets. Thus, flight awards for older children are pretty straightforward – if they’re over the age of two, you’ll be redeeming the same amount of points for them as you would for an adult.

However, if you’re travelling with a child under the age of two, the situation is quite different, and in fact, he or she may be able to fly almost for free.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how different award programs price infant award tickets, as well as some additional considerations.

The Basics

Let’s start with the definition of an infant in the aviation world. For most airlines, an infant is any child under the age of two at the time of departure.

If your child happens to turn two between flights during your trip, then they’ll no longer be considered an infant for the remaining segments of the itinerary that occur after their second birthday, and will require a seat. In fact, some airlines will even consider them a child for the entire booking, thus requiring you to redeem a full award ticket for your child.

If you find yourself in this situation, it may be better to book two separate one-way bookings so that you get the infant fare on departure, and a child or full fare on return. Some airlines will manually price the outbound flight as an infant and the inbound as a child in these situations.

Seating Options with Infants

When travelling on an airplane with an infant, you have one of two options:

• Infants can occupy their own seat, which in most cases they’ll be charged the full adult award fare (although there are exceptions, like with Emirates). If they occupy their own seat, then you’re required to bring along a car seat or an approved child aviation restraint system.
• Infants can also remain an infant on lap, in which case they’re seated in the lap of an adult. Some airlines provide a lap belt extension for the infant to use. If your infant is young and small enough, airlines may be able to provide bassinets for use in designated bulkhead seats.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll be looking specifically at travelling with an infant on lap.

The Cost

In general, airlines have adopted one of five approaches for charging lap infants:

• No fare
• A percentage of the adult revenue fare
• A percentage of the standard award fare
• A fixed revenue fare
• A fixed award…