Just a few days ago, United Airlines announced that they would end the practice of pre-boarding families traveling with small children.

They aren't alone.

I noticed on a recent flight that Southwest has moved their kid "pre-boarding" to later in the sequence.

(Jet Blue still pre boards kids. And has TV. Any questions?)

Do you think this is a part of a wider trend? Is air travel becoming less child friendly overall? What is the strategy here? Will it cause families to change they're travel plans?

Our trip last week was our first air travel with TheBoy. The "after the A's" sequence wasn't so bad on Southwest. There were still plenty of seats and bin space in the back o' the plane, so we didn't mind. Though it was only for families with children 4 and younger, so it's likely this is the only trip we'll get to take advantage of it. I think it should be probably to age 6.

It's really dumb to eliminate it I think. It'll just hold things up more, and this whole "paying extra for aisle and window seats" without taking into account families is stupid. I'd never NOT sit with my 4 year old (or younger kid), If no one volunteered to help us out, I'd have the steward take care of it, OR, we'd get off the plane and I'd have a major fit with the airline to get us on another flight TOGETHER. It's unreasonable to expect families to sit apart, especially considering the cost of airfare, even on the discount airlines. Besides, the airline is going to get more than an earful if 2 people who paid extra for their seats had to deal with a scared 4 year old between them the whole flight because he couldn't sit next to his parents.

We travel quite a bit with our toddler. His first time on a plane was at four months old, and our most recent trip by air travel was just this month.

I kind of assume the worst with boarding/unboarding and we don't even bother to get off the plane until everyone else has left the plane, regardless of what aisle we're in.

One thing that I find to be an indispensable luxury are those luggage carts you can rent at the airport for $4. It took me a while to convince my wife that those were worth the money. For the cost of a Venti at Starbucks we can actually get through the airport at a reasonable pace without killing my back/neck/etc.

Before the baby came, we could (and did) travel with literally nothing more than a pair of backpacks. Pack light, travel light. Now, we take half the house with us. On our latest trip (a 10 day adventure which I plan to post about here some day, as it was an interesting "travel with baby" experience) we had 2 checked in luggage, 2 carryon bags, a big Coleman cooler, an umbrella stroller, and a fullsize backpack. By all means, I was happy to swipe my credit card at the luggage cart kiosk.

edit: oh yeah we brought our fullsize car seat too. and I'm the guy that had trouble w/ weight training in the 'fitness' forum...

The sad part is when I was single I had to let everyone with kids board and now its my turn and they tell me to get back inline. Kind of like what Social Security is going to be like for us