We currently have award seats to go to Asia next spring on hold w/ AA. We'll be travelling with about a 6 month old by that time. Socalterp JR will have his own seat - we thought about the lap child route, but decided the extra 70K miles is worth it for everyone's comfort. Now we're just trying to figure out what the best seating configuration for the trans-PAC sections is; the domestic MD80 sections are pretty easy, we'll just get the 3 side.

On the 777, anybody have experience travelling with infants long haul? Since you can't book a bassinet/bulkhead in advance, is it best to:

1) Take 3 seats in the middle 5 section, and hope there is an empty seat or someone moves to give you more room.

2) Take a pair of the 2 seats, and then a single either across the aisle, or an aisle seat a row forward or back.

In terms of option 2, my wife and I are both Gold, so have the option of booking the exit row. I was thinking of putting one of us in the exit row 31B, and then the other and the infant a row back or across the aisle. I'm not sure that I'd do this with a more-active toddler, but with an infant who hopefully will sleep most of the time, is this practical? That way, we can switch off in the exit row seat for a little more room while the other "watches" the infant.

We've done as much as possible to try to break up the flights (CLT-DFW-LAX-stopover, LAX-NRT stopover, NRT-TPE...and then TPE-NRT-ORD-stopover, ORD-CLT) to make the trip as "short" possible. Never know how it will go, but we've both done a lot of flying, and don't want to be "those" people with the screaming infant.