FLIGHTS

We booked our flights separately from the other elements of the holiday (car hire and accommodation etc). We are not sure is this was the cheapest way to do it – almost certainly a package will be cheaper - but we wanted to get the flights booked but at the time we did not know where we wanted to go and how long we would spend in each place.

The flights were with Virgin Airlines and we booked them through the Virgin Atlantic website (www.virgin-atlantic.com). The website is great – especially as once you have booked your flight you can go in and change where you want to sit, order meals for the kids and lots of other clever things.

The other really useful feature on the website is what is called ‘DIY Check-In’ – the day before you fly you can go onto the website, enter everybody’s name and passport number and when you get to the airport you have your own separate checking-in queue! The upshot is that you only have to be at the airport 1 hour before your flight instead of the usual 2-3 hours. We found this made the whole thing much less hassle, especially with the kids who were mixture of excited and bored at the airport.

The flight out was on one of Virgin’s new airplanes – a 9 hour flight is never much fun but especially with young kids. However, we found it to be an absolute breeze, mostly because the plane had an amazing ‘in-flight entertainment system’. The screen in the back of the headrests is linked to a fancy handset and you are able to view load of films and TV programmes (all of which you can start, stop and pause whenever you want), lots of games and quizzes, watch the progress of the flight and even send text messages to other people on the flight!

The flight back must have been on an older plane as it had a relatively old-fashioned entertainment system – however, we were asleep most of the way as it was a night flight so it didn’t make any difference to us!

Virgin staff were great with the kids – we felt that their reputation of being the best airline with kids was well deserved.