Travel with Children - Pre-flight cockpit protocol with kids

Recent redeye in F with my 25 month old who is plane obsessed. Was the early UA redeye from OGG to LAX.

FAs very friendly and asks son if he wants to meet pilot. Of course he says "YES" and we go up to cockpit and the very cool pilot shows him all the instruments and knobs and she even sets off a few alarms (TCAS) and he was in heaven. She kept going and going and even offered us a photo opportunity, which I declined for the timing reasons below.

The pilot was obviously going above and beyond the call of duty and probably didnt want to offend a F passenger. There is no way a 25 month old boy would ever leave a cockpit on his own accord. Is there an appropriate amount of time/activity in the cockpit after which you would pull your kids back to their seat?

I really got the sense that this UA captain would have delayed departure if my son wanted it -- obviously I was sensitive to that and pulled him after about 2-3 minutes of cockpit fun. Was that too long up there? Then again, if door is still open and the captain is game, should the parent just go with it until the pilot signals "time up"?

The pilot will know what tasks he has to finish before takeoff, and he won't allow a visit to interfere with that. It would be bad form for someone to linger AFTER the pilot is nice enough to show you around. If you're about to stay too long, you'll get a polite reminder.

We have met some extremely nice pilots, who allowed my daughter to sit in the seat and even some who encouraged us to take pictures. I would not stay more than a couple of minutes. After all, they have a job to do!

Oh, that's sooo sweet. My kid is the same age and would DIE for the chance to do that. Sounds like the pilot was a mom, too.

I would definitely trust the pilot's signals to know when to go--but also trust my own gut. If pulling the kid away at a particular time would end up in a meltdown, but could be avoided if you did it earlier, I'd pull them out a little early, for sure. And definitely respect any signals the pilot sends--she was doing you a huge favor and it was really kind of her! I hope I end up on her plane one day!

It's been my experience that the crew knows how to end the visit gracefully. In my case on a recent HNL-LAX flight, I took my seven year old to the cockpit, and then went back to my seat for a few minutes to put our stuff down. I came back and the captain pulled me aside and said, 'your little boy just told me you live in a very small village (LA a small village??) and not only that, he just invited me over for dinner'. I took that as a cue to get junior out of there before he made any more promises!