Aibu to expect an airline to offer allergy friendly food for my almost 2 year old son?

[danishkids]

We will be traveling with Qatar airlines in July. We will be traveling with your 22 month old son who has allergies. To milk egg and almonds. He carries an epi-pen for the milk allergy.

We have been informed that they can only offer baby glass jar food for our son and some apples and bananas. The glass jars he can have (due to his allergies) are age 6-9 months.

He eats the same food as us. We have ask for a child’s meal instead, I have even offered to pay for it. The reply I get is that I should take my own food. However with no microwave or fridge. With 3 flights over 26 hours.

Baby fruit will not sustain him for that long.
I feel Like they are being unreasonable.

FYI you can order allergy meals for adults.

www.ocado.com/webshop/product/itsu-katsu-noodle-cup/402554011?from=search&tags=%7C20000&param=itsu&parentContainer=SEARCHitsu

Would he eat something like posh noodles? Not the healthiest for a 2 year old but would give him something warm, some of the range are milk free though. Also you can buy tetra packed free from meals in Co Op although not sure if they can be heated in hot water also may count as paste so need to be careful of weight.

• should have said NOT milk free but others are

M and S also do tetra pack meals

Taking peanut butter on a plane

Taking smoked sausages is NOT a good idea. Not only do they have a very strong odour but pork products are illegal in Qatar.

The OP is not going to Qatar!!!

And the smoked sausages really don’t smell that strongly.

OP has a layover in Qatar

Oh sorry I missed that.

Wouldn't bank on having allergy free meals anyway. When we flew with Virgin they forgot all of the allergen free meals and the children's meals, even though we had ordered them months before.

It seems very common for them to not load specially pre ordered meals into the plane. Also quite often allergy friendly just means gluten free

Raisins are also a good thing to take that won’t go off.

Please, please don’t take peanut butter on a plane!! Especially not to give to toddlers who are likely to smear it everywhere.

Peanut butter?

Dc has a dairy allergy and all the airline offer is low lactose or vegan meal. We take a packed lunch.
Chicken drumsticks, mini sausages plenty of fruit etc.

Harder if you have to go through customs during you journey but I never trust airline food.

Pork products are not illegal in Qatar and no one is going to care about you eating salami on the plane. She's not going through immigration so she's not importing pork products to Qatar anyway.

I'm really struggling to understand why the OP keeps mentioning she'd pay extra for a meal.

You've saved hundreds of pounds by not booking a seat for your son because you can get away with it because he's under 2.

You can't just request to pay to add on the bits you'd like to have as extras.

And as for saying you won't use the airline again, unless you want to visit Finland on the way, I'm guessing you chose it because it was cheap as no one would chose to fly to Auckland from the UK via Finland otherwise.

I thought that my son being under 2 years of age that he had to sit on my knee. and I thought that it was easier than having to find the right car seat for him to sit on in the airplane.

I didn’t realize that it meant that food would be a problem. And I know my son. He will also want to sit on me.

You are right that the norm is for under two to be on lap. It’s also the norm for airlines not to provide any food at all for passengers without a seat. Lots of the full service airlines don’t even provide baby food jars. So this would be an issue irrespective of which airline you flew with.

Honestly even if your DC had their own seat you’d be bonkers to rely on a suitable meal being provided.

Not flying from the Uk, I’m flying from Denmark ;)

He has to sit on your knee for takeoff and landing (unless you have an approved car seat) but you can pay child fare (rather than the 10% infant fare) and he can have his own seat for the rest of the journey.

I disagree it's the norm for a 22 month old to be travelling to NZ without a seat! Yes if you need to save the money of course but it's actually fairly rare to see a child of much more than 18 months on a lap long haul in my experience. As I've said, I always paid for a seat for my kids from about 15 months. That said, I've never been brave enough to go proper long haul with children who won't just plug into the IFE 😀

I wasn’t aware of the rules when I booked it. And I have beeen told that I can’t book a child fare now. (I guess cause there is no more room) at least when I said that I could pay the child fare, she said that I couldn’t. There were none available

But I’m not worried about him being in my knee :D

Book an allergy meal for you that you know he can eat. I would be surprised if the flight attendants then won't give you a normal meal too for you. Take a packed lunch just in case.

IME, long haul with good airlines and under twos, they will give you a meal for them too if you ask (nicely!).

Just take what you need for him. We take loads of snacks and drinks. Fruit pouches etc. Stuff they'd have in a lunchbox. Despite shelling out blooody thousands in air fares my kids have never eaten a scrap of of food provided by the airline...except the twixes and crisps from the all day bar thingy. Grrr.

All I can think is that you're going to have fun with a 22months on your knees for that long lol! I do long haul quite a bit (but not that far, only UK-India) and I've done the 'saving money' bit in the past by planning the holidays just before my oldest child (only child at the time) turned 2 so that she could sit on my lap... It was a v long flight for me :) I don't think id want that for the kind of long haul you're planning.
So yes pack loads of snacks, that sounds like a good plan!

For the jars - depends what's in it! All my kids love the fruits pouches, it's just fruit, labelled 4months + but my kids are 7, 4 and 1 and all love it. I've never done baby jars but I suppose some may taste just fine! The 6-9months bit is just for textures. He may still like it.

Oh and yes tell the flight people u need an allergy meal because you couldn't prevent your son from stealing bits of food from you.. Surely that makes sense no? Thinking about it I would say whether or not you plan to really share with him it seems v risky to have a normal meal yourself in the space restriction of an airplane and with the toddler on your lap!