Entertainment for Kids on Flights

The four dependencies to remove

The wifi row is the one that ruins flights. A tablet full of streaming apps and no downloads is an expensive brick the moment the aircraft door closes, and a child does not accept the explanation.

Download the night before, not at the gate

• Twice as much as the flight is long. Delays, taxi time and the journey at the other end are all part of the same problem.
• Check it plays in airplane mode before you leave the house. Some apps re-authenticate on open, which fails at altitude and looks identical to having nothing downloaded.
• Mix formats. Video, audiobooks, music, offline games. A four-year old will not watch four hours of anything.
• Airport wifi is not a plan. Downloading a film at a gate takes longer than boarding does.

The battery arithmetic

A tablet is roughly 30 Wh. A compact power bank publishes 36.3 Wh — which is one full tablet recharge plus a phone, and enough for almost any flight.

For one child the compact bank is the right answer at a third of the weight. For two children and a long-haul, the larger one earns its 1.39 lb. The 100 Wh ceiling and what fits under it.

Two rules attach. The bank must travel in the cabin — spare lithium batteries are prohibited in the hold — and it needs to be in the bag under the seat rather than in an overhead bin, because a bank you cannot reach is a bank you do not have. The battery rules.

Headphones: wired, child-sized, and a spare

Three requirements, and adults routinely get all three wrong by handing a child their own pair.

• Wired. Seatback entertainment systems use a 3.5 mm socket. Bluetooth headphones do not connect to one without a separate transmitter.
• Child-sized. Adult over-ears do not seal on a small head, which means the child turns the volume up to compensate.
• A spare pair. They cost almost nothing, weigh almost nothing, and a broken cable at hour two of eight is a genuinely bad outcome.
• A 3.5 mm adapter for the tablet, if it has no headphone socket — which most now do not.

The half that is not a screen

Screens do the heavy lifting and they stop working as novelty about three hours in. The things that work after that are small, cheap and physical.

• Sticker books and reusable sticker pads. Endless, quiet, and they do not roll under a seat.
• A new small toy, unwrapped in flight. Novelty is the active ingredient, so it has to be one they have not seen.
• Snacks as pacing. Solid food has no quantity limit through security, and producing something every hour structures the flight. What food clears a checkpoint.
• Something for the descent. Chewing or drinking helps ears equalise, and it is the part of the flight most likely to go badly.
• Not anything with small loose parts. Everything dropped in a seat row is gone until landing.

Where it all lives

In the child’s own bag, under the seat in front of them, packed by them where they are old enough.

Two reasons. A child who packed their own bag knows what is in it and stops asking you to find things. And the under-seat bag is the one that cannot be gate-checked, so the entertainment, the battery and the snacks are never in the hold. Bags sized for smaller people.