The thought of flying with children can leave some people with a chill running down their spine, especially if the child is not yours and just happens to have the seat in front, behind or beside you. These worries are the main reason many people holiday in their home country or a driving holiday, but it doesn’t have to be that bad if you plan well for it. I have gathered some information from friends, forums and from my own experience and with this post and the next few in this catagory I’ll try and pass on as many hints and tips as I can.

All airlines use the same criteria when determining how much your child will be charged for flying with them, 0-2yo is an infant, 3-11yo is a child and 12yo upwards is a full adult when it comes to pricing. Infants will not be given a seat therefore the cost will be either zero or up to about 10% of the adult ticket. This will differ from one airline to the next so check what each has to offer you as a travelling parent of an infant. Children will be given there own seat and can be charged anywhere between 50-80% of the adult ticket, again this will change with airlines so check prices of a few different ones. Once your little ones reach 12 they will be paying full adult prices for them, so take advantage of their younger years and fly early.

I have travelled with children on long haul flights to Thailand when they were as young as 3 months and have learned something new on every trip but the overall piece of advice I can give is to prepare for your trip in advance and make it like a military operation, at some point it may feel like you are in a battle. Be early for everything! Be the first at check in, be the first at the departure gate, be the first to get on the aeroplane, be the first to get overhead luggage space near you.

If your child is in the infant bracket it’s best to book your flight early and make sure you get the bulk head seat to book your bassinette, or they will be on your lap the whole flight. They may be there anyway but should they fall asleep you have somewhere to put them.

Direct flights are always best if you can get them if not think about what time you will be stopping and what your little one will be like at that time. Now if your little one is an infant this is no problem but if they are older they will not thank you for that midnight stroll around some airport in the Middle East.

Taking off and landing will be the most stressful time for your children so plan for that. Make sure they have a dummy to chew on, a bottle to drink from or some lollies and sweets to suck on. This will help with equalising the pressure in the ears naturally. For younger children and infants it may be best to try and give them some Calpol to help with and ear pain but I’ve never found that to be necessary, yet!

During The Flight make sure you have a large pack of wipes for all those accidents and if with an infant ensure you have enough bottles, nappies and changes of clothing for a 24 hour period. If the child is young enough have them in baby grows the whole trip this will be the easiest way to change and it also protects them from the cold AC on flights. It may also be an idea to pack a light change of clothing for yourself as well, projectile vomit is not a very good ‘arrival loung’ look this year, or any year.

Infant food on airlines is a complicated issue these days so any advice given here is best checked first with the airline. When me and my wife travelled with our children we had with us a supply of ready made formula milk in cartons, some people have said they take the powder and get hot water while on the aeroplane to make up the bottles but we thought that would be a hassle. We found sterilised disposable bottles, so all we had to do was open the packet pour the milk into the bottle and get the stewardess to heat it for a few seconds, but as it was he was happy to have the milk without heating, so happy days.

I’ll stop now as this is getting a long post but in conclusion I would say you should really try and relax and prepare for your fight as much as you can. It will be stressful, especially if your little one cries a lot during the flight, but a crying baby is stressfull when not on a flight so do what you would do normally to sooth the baby. If the children are older then distraction works best but that is for another post.

If you think I’ve missed something why not leave a comment below and if you have enjoyed reading this then sign up for updates or grab our RSS feed above.

This is the third in a five part post about learning to dive. In the previous posts I have discussed why you should learn to dive, is one training agency better than another and is it better to learn to dive at home or when on holiday?

This post will go further into the actual course you would do. As I said in a previous post I‘ve been a PADI instructor for a number of years and have taught in both the UK and in Thailand. The breakdown I’m about to talk about is from a typical PADI Open Water Diver Course regardless if it takes 4 days, 4weeks or 4months, what you learn is exactly the same.

A PADI Open Water Diver Course (OWD) is the first level at which, after qualification, you can dive independent of a dive instructor or professional guide. With this in mind you can understand that you will learn a lot on this course and it’s not until your Rescue Diver course will the learning curve be so step.

The OWD course is split into 3 sections knowledge development, confined water and open water. When you first sign up for your course you’ll be handed a load of stuff some of which will not make any sense to you yet. The book however will be your first introduction to the world of scuba diving and will be the focus your academic training.

Knowledge Development

Most schools now opt for their customers to do independent study and monitor how much they read and understood the chapter. Depending on where you learn to dive you may also get a DVD or video to take home that talks about each chapter and shows you examples of what it’s talking about. Your answers to the knowledge developments are used for monitoring how well you understood the topic and if you get stuck then the instructor only needs to go over that one area instead of waffling on about stuff you already understand. Good huh!!!

The five knowledge developments are broken down like this

KD 1

• Buoyancy
• Comfortable Ascents
• Comfortable Descents
• Breathing Underwater

KD2

• Staying Warm
• Streamlining Yourself
• Diving Together

KD3

• What’s It Like Where We’ll We Diving?
• Care For Yourself
• Care For Others
• Solution Thinking Underwater
• Offshore Adventures

KD4

• Nitrogen Narcosis
• Decompression Sickness
• Dive Table Introduction
• Using The Recreational Dive Planner (RDP)

KD5

• Making Safety Stops
• Emergency Decompression
• Altitude Considerations for divers
• Finding a minimum surface interval
• Electronic dive planning

There is no time limit on these chapters but to proceed onto the confined water sections you must have completed the appropriate chapter in the book, for example to start confined water one you must have completed KD1. In theory this is great, in practise in a holiday resort it doesn’t work. You may find yourself doing 2 chapters then 3 confined water sessions or maybe only 1 chapter than all confined session in a day. This is something you will work out with your instructor.

Confined Water

To most people confined water would be a swimming pool but you may find your first training session to be in the sea. What is meant by confined water is swimming pool or open sea area that offers swimming pool like conditions in respect of clarity, calmness and depth. As you begin your training it should first be conducted in waters shallow enough to stand up in to build your confidence and ability then move on to water to deep to stand up in.

The confined water session are spilt into 5 parts, each taking the training a step further. This is a breakdown of some of the main things you will learn in each part.

CW1

• Scuba Equipment & How To Put It Together & Put It On Safely
• Breathing Underwater
• Hand Signals
• Recovering & Clearing A Regulator
• Clearing A Partially Flooded Mask
• Swimming Underwater
• Using Your Submersible Pressure Gauge
• Locating & Using An Alternate Air Source (AAS)
• Ascents From Deep Water

CW2

• Pre-Dive Safety Check
• Deep Water Entry & Controlled Descents
• Mask Removal, Replacement & Clearing
• Air Depletion Exercise
• Surface Swimming In Scuba Gear
• Snorkel Clearing
• Scuba Equipment Removal On The Surface

CW3

• Fin Pivots, Neutral Buoyancy Skills & Swimming
• Air Depletion & AAS Location & Use
• Free Flowing Regulator
• Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent (CESA)

CW4

• Mask Removal & Swim, Replace & Clear Mask
• Neutral Buoyancy Skills & Swim
• Buddy Breathing

CW5

• Scuba Unit Removal & Replacement Underwater
• Scuba Unit Removal & Replacement On The Surface

Open Water Sessions

Now for the real fun parts with four dives in the open water. You are limited to only 2 training dives in any one day so these dives have to be conducted over 2 days. On your first day you will not go deeper than 12m and on the second day you will go no deeper than 18m. How these dives are conducted is where there is a big variation in the PADI courses around the world. Some will be done in fresh water quarry pits, some will be done from the shore of a quite bay, some from a busy beach or from a boat. What ever the location or type of water, there is still a standardised way in which the dives will be done.

The skills you trained for in the pool will now be practised again but this time in deeper waters but like the pool you will have time to get confident in your surroundings before you do any skills.

Ideally your first dive should only include skills that you would do in every dive anyway. The breakdown listed here is only what you may do on any specific dive and the actual dive you do the skill on may vary, so this is just an idea of what you may do.

OW1

• Equipment Preparation Putting It On & Adjustment
• Pre-Dive Safety Check (BWRAF)
• Entry Appropriate To Location
• Weight Check
• Controlled Descent & Swimming
• Ascent & Exit
• Logging The Dive

OW 2

• Buoyancy Control
• Partial & Complete Mask Flood & Clear
• Regulator Recovery & Clearing
• Alternate Air Source Use Stationary & Assisted Ascent
• Weight Removal At The Surface
• Snorkel/Regulator Exchange
• 25 m/yard Tired Diver Tow

OW 3

• Cramp Removal Self & Buddy
• 50 m/yard Straight Line Surface Swim With Compass
• Free Descent With Reference
• Buoyancy Control
• Complete Mask Flood & Clear
• Buddy Breathing
• Underwater Exploration
• Remove & Replace Weight System At The Surface
• Remove & Replace Scuba Unit At The Surface
• Debrief & Log Dive

Ow4

• Free Descent Without Reference
• Buoyancy Control
• Mask Removal, Replacement & Clearing
• Underwater Navigation With Compass
• CESA

Now you have the full breakdown of what you will do on your PADI Open Water Course you should be rushing out to book yours or start to look for dive operators at your next holiday destination. In the next post I will be talking about what to do after you have finished your course. Many people learn to dive on holiday and only ever do the four dives required for the course, so I’ll talk about what to do to get the best from your new skill.

Learn To Dive – Part 1 Why Learn To Dive?

Learn To Dive – Part 2 Where To Learn To Dive

Learn To Dive – Part 3 What Will I do On The Course

With Thailand offered as an all year round holiday destination, I thought it would be best to point out that although you can pretty much dive all year round this is not possable or practical at the same location. The best time to dive in Thailand depends on where you want your topside holiday to be and what else you want to do, if anything, while there.

For example maybe you want to do a jungle trek in the northern hills of Chiang Mai then a dive trip in the south. The favourite time for many visitors to Chiang Mai is in winter between November and February when temperatures drop to a pleasant cool. The bright sunshine and clear blue skies along with the abundance of flowers, means that the city is at her prettiest for visitors.

With the southern monsoon building up however, many of the dive sites in the Gulf of Thailand are not suitable to dive around winter time. In contrast, the west coast peak dive season coincides with this winter break so if it was a trek/dive holiday you wanted then you would be best to choose Krabi, Phuket or any of the other west coast dive destinations for your holiday.

So although Thailand is an all year round holiday destination it really does depend on where you want to dive to find out the best time to dive in Thailand. Maybe that is a perfect excuse to visit the Land of Smiles many times, to dive and visit the variety of locations on offer at different times of the year. Although the best time to visit Chiang Mai maybe November to February it can be equally beautiful in the monsoon season with full rivers and lush jungles, if you get some nice weather for the day that is. But such trips are worth the gamble in my opinion, do you agree?