Travelling with kids

[hobbes79]

Hi all,

I am currently studying for a degree in Engineering and as part of this I need to design a product in a certain field. The topic is "Going on holiday with children under 5".

I have decided to focus on trying to design a product that makes it easier to travel from your front door to the airports check-in desk (including travel by car, bus, train etc). If you have been on holiday (or even if not) and can highlight some difficulties you have had I'd be really grateful.

For example the sort of things I have come up with are:

Trying to push a pram and pull a suitcase whilst carrying a rucksack.

Loading the car up with a lot of bags and screaming kids.

Trying to pull a full sized case while also pulling along a Trunki case complete with happy child.

It doesn't matter how small or stupid sounding a gripe you have, I'd really like to hear your opinion! If you have any ideas of how to improve the experience I'd like to hear that too.

Thanks everyone.

Our kids are older than 5.

We had the right weight for our luggage on arrival at the airport.

Our bags were in room for departure, we paid to get them weighed only to find that it weighed more. This was surprising as we had less stuff in them

When we got to the airport we realised that the scales at the holiday place was not correct. Not sure if it was scam to get our money.

Wish we had carried our hand held scales with us.

something to attach the suitcase to the buggy would be great. Stable enough u could get in and out of trains and buses.

Juggling everything through security at airports is always a nightmare.

Liquids and computers, phones etc all need to be taken out of bags. Babies need taking out of pushchair, pushchair collapsed to go through scanner and then some really tricky airports need everyone's shoes and belts off.

Not sure how you can make that less stressful, but if you could it would be very popular!

I fly often to NZ alone with my kids. I have always taken on board a car seat for them up till the age of about 3.5 (always purchased a seat once either baby got to about 8 months). The car seat is a godsend as child is comfy and restrained, they have always slept one entire leg of the journey.

However it is a mission to cart about along with everything else and the kids. A product that would work like a car seat (recline, size, harness, padding), fulfil the airlines requirements and that could be folded or collapsed in some way would be great.