jstevenson0617

Is there a reason your toddler can't just drink milk purchased after security and/or provided on the airplane? Seems like a lot of trouble for plain milk when it's readily available in the concourse and on the flight.

Eclipsepearl

Not necessarily true. Depends on the airport and sometimes where in the airport they'll be. Also, some kids can get picky about the milk they'll drink (says a former child who would only drink very cold, fresh low fat milk back then). I absolutely refused to drink the milk served on the airplane (funny the stuff you remember from way back??)

Also, I've heard of the airlines "providing water" for bottles but neither that I worked for did. Nor did I recall it being offered on the many other airlines I've flown with my kids. Most of the time, we had barely enough bottled water for the first service, let alone enough to fill all those baby bottles! It runs out fast. Bring your own but that is usually easier to buy in the concourse.

fredandgingermad

Depends also if you can get the 'right' milk, i remember being assured by boots 3 times that i could definately buy full fat milk from them at LHR, of course i couldn't

Incidently re water, the same airline (VS) said they couldn't supply water for baby bottles on the way out, if i'd been the one asking i'd hazard a guess to say they couldn't have done it on the way back either!

themicah

mrsmicah and I just got back from a trip with a young toddler and a preschooler. Flew out of JFK and back from TPA.

At JFK (T5) they took our food bag (with ice packs, bottles of milk, etc.) off the belt, swabbed it quickly and gave it back to us before I had time to put on my shoes.

At TPA yesterday (E concourse), they started to do the same, but the TSO called over a supervisor to ask what to do with two sealed yogurt containers we had in the bag this time (we didn't have yogurt on the outbound). The supervisor gave us a choice of throwing them out, opening both for swabbing, or doing a full secondary on all four of us and all of our carryons--including full pat-downs on wife and kids. Which of course makes perfect sense, since obviously we wouldn't be able to use whatever dangerous substance was in our sealed yogurt containers (to say nothing of our much larger ice packs) unless we had other contraband stashed in our carryons or on our persons.

I chose option 3 as I wanted to have the yogurt for the kids' dinner and didn't want open yogurt containers sloshing around in our bags. The supervisor called over three more TSOs (who were trying hard to keep their eyes from rolling) and they proceeded to very half-heartedly glance inside our carryons and swab all our bags and our stroller. mrsmicah got a very quick and ineffective pat-down. By the time they got through our carryons they seemed to forget about patting down the rest of us and sent us on our way. To their credit, the TSOs were friendly and upbeat throughout. One even commented about how silly this was (once his supervisor was out of earshot).

schamom

Glad to hear about the not opening factory sealed products at larger airports and if someone has that link, I might print it out and carry it with me. My son can't drink cow's milk but drinks rice milk which comes in those juice box like cartons. I was wanting to bring those for an international overnight flight this summer to help him go to sleep since that's part of his "routine". My experience with the sealed products though has been a nightmare and so I was nervous. At Charleston Airport, they would want us to open our factory sealed formula cans (they were like small soda cans with a pop tab) every time I flew with him because they were more than 3 oz. We had no trouble at O'Hare on way out. They just ran the strip all over the can. They would make either my husband or I consent to the pat down if we wouldn't open them and we wouldn't because then they were useless. Lots of fun when traveling with 4 kids, 10 and under, to lose one parent to a pat down at security. Clearly depends on the airport which makes me crazy since the rules should be consistent at least in the United States!