A350 club world with small children
 

Hello all,

I’m out of touch with the newer BA seating (suite’ing?).

Does anyone have experience (or opinions) on how successful two adults, a three year old and a two year old would be spread across 4 seats on the a350?

Three year old is a reasonably experienced flyer and has been in his own seat before, but it’s been over a year since he flew. Two year old will effectively be new to the whole game as his lap based flying was (for him) a lifetime ago.

Obviously the old “love seats” were perfect for this kind of situation. Not sure how easy it is to reach across to help if needed with the new seats.

Some tips on the main A350 seating thread

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...-thread-2.html

Would suggest 2xEF seats in front of each other, perhaps in the smaller cabin. Not sure where and when you’re going but don’t expect current allocated aircraft type to stick !

Thanks for the recommendation and pointer to the other thread. That would have been a better place for this question! Will give it a read.

Understand not to bank on type of aircraft! My overthinking was actually partially to ensure that in case of switches we were not walking into trouble.

I've flown the A350 with children - but somewhat older than yours are. But I have a parent's eye... and I'd say you face a bit of a challenge. The A350s are lovely for grown-ups in Club - so much more space, etc etc. But that's precisely the reason why you will find the space challenging with a two-year old, and reaching over will be something of a challenge.

And while it is true that there's no guarantee of what plane will be on what route in the coming months, the A350 seems to have been a pandemic favorite for BA to use, covering quite a few routes where it wouldn't normally be seen. So it's certainly popular in the current climate. Do you have a specific route in mind?

Surely you’d be as, if not more, comfortable with the 4x centre seats in premium economy, with a substantial saving to ice the cake.

it’s a consideration, but it’s good to be able to have the lie flats for overnight to maximise the chance of rest.

Austin, so we have a few routing options - delta on the 767 with the all front facing seats may be the winner.

The A350 CW is totally unsuitable for a 2 and 3 year old. The middle pair are quite difficult to lean through, and if you suddenly need to be by their side to help then it's not easy to nip round to the other aisle. Being across the aisle is no better because they are slightly offset and with the high sides to the seat you can't easily keep an eye on them or even at least be in each others eyesight easily.

On a recent flight with Club Suites there was a family with 2 young children and they were sat behind each other in window seats. The parents were having a real issue getting the youngest child to stay in their seat for take-off (they were maybe 2 or 3) - the mother kept having to get up as we were taxiing to try and get her to sit down and it all seemed rather stressful. I will caveat that with the fact that we had a one hour delay after pushback, which can't have helped the situation. Middle seats or 2 rows across the aisle from each other would certainly be a better bet than four in a line, but it's really not an ideal set up.

On one of my A350 flights some parents mentioned, well before take-off, that their kid was a bit hyperactive, and could they take another seat just for take-off? The cabin crew found some seats in WTP or WT (not sure which) for mum and kid, then they rejoined dad and other kid back in Club. The crew seemed pleased with their foresight.

This.

I was in 1A a couple of months ago and a toddler in 2A. The parents in 3A and one of the aisle seats struggled to care for her as they could not reach out easily so had to keep getting up.

This is an interesting thread for me. Covid has kicked the can down the road for us making our inaugural trip as a family of five to see family in the US. Our triplets are now 17 months old, and the current situation has eased the pressure on us to take them to visit Grammie and Grandaddy and their aunts, uncles and cousins. Naturally my wife is desperate to see her family – especially her parents (her dad has had covid) and to see her homeland. So whilst on paper taking 2-3 year old triplets across the pond is a bonkers idea, there are lots of other factors at play.

We’d likely go to MIA, BNA or DEN, and my plan is to get someone else to fly with us and then look at aircraft with old CW so we can have a central group of four, and then maybe a window pair. We’re in no hurry (especially to book), but will probably look at something like February-April next year for a week or two. By then hopefully aircraft might be a little more predictable. My added complication is a back problem, which is worst when standing or sitting for any length of time (exercise is fine). I was in significant pain for days during a work trip a few years ago having flown WTP to HKG (and even then I had 61J on the A380) so ideally I’d want to avoid that. Granted, none of the destinations I mentioned above are as far as Hong Kong, but still.

We’ve got a bank of Avios and several 241s. I’d be happy to do an ex-EU myself (just me – with the b2b the day before), but that kind of thing even 18 months from now could still be much more complicated than it used to be. I’m sure we’ll work it all out and have an exciting trip whenever it happens, and I’ll certainly be asking for lots of advice here along the way.

Best thing is for yourself and your wife to fly Club and let the nanny and the children fly WTP

I’d recommend getting nanny and children to fly on ahead of you by a day or 2. That way you can arrive by bedtime, kiss them goodnight and enjoy your first evening without any of the attendant hassle of travelling with them.

I can just see the look on the faces of our nanny and Mrs GM if I pitched that...! I also wouldn't want to leave the nanny in charge of all 3 toddlers in WTP on her own. I'd feel very guilty doing that.

I don't think our nanny would come - she has a 9-year old and we share her with another family (my parents help us out somne days). More likely my parents would fly out with us and have a holiday elsewhere, or my sister-in-law would fly over, spend a couple of weeks with us and then help us get over there and back.

we did similar on QR to Perth. We found a whole row worked well with the kids in the middle E/F seats, as they could watch films and play their switches together.
Whilst parents were close by but retained our preferred window seats