We love our inflatable footrest when flying long distances. While they are not approved on our airlines, we find that if we only have them inflatable after take-off and taken down before landing we have not had issues.
Our Experience with an Inflatable Footrest
Our first overnight flight with kids was when our son was 2 and our daughter was 7mold. We brought car seats but that isn’t always ideal.
The next overnight flight 2 years later we had a row of 4 seats and had our daughter at 2 yrs old sleep o the floor with extra blankets while our son slept on the 2 seats above. Again it worked flight attendants didn’t complain and we were lucky enough the fasten seatbelt sign didn’t come on during the night. It wasn’t the safest option either.
Then when the kids were 3 and 4.5 we headed to Europe. We had each kid laying on us and while the kids slept well it wasn’t the best sleep for us. At the time I was seeing prices for footrests of $80 and thought how ridiculous.
Cost of Inflatable Footrests
If I had known then what I know now I would have gladly paid the $80. Lucky for you and me you don’t have to spend that. For only less than $16 you can purchase an inflatable footrest from amazon. We purchased inflatable footrests (affiliate link) for overnight flights to make it easier for our kids to sleep especially as they got bigger and can’t sleep on our laps as easily.
Inflatable Footrest is perfect for Kids
The footrest allows them to lay down and get comfortable while still keeping the seatbelt on. They are actually great for any time use as they give the kids something to put their feet on and they don’t have to use the seat in front of them to push off whenever they start to slide off the seat. However, because of the limited space in carry-on bags, we don’t bring them for every flight. The inflatable footrests are about the size of 2 soda cans. We can easily fit 2 of them in a backpack with our bubble bum booster seats (for our arrival transfer not for use on the plane) with room to spare.
The footrest we purchased has 2 chambers which allow you to adjust the height filling both make it level with the seat filling one leaf about ⅔ of it full: about 8-12” of space or fill the other chamber leaving about ⅓ full. Leaving about 2 feet of space. We mostly leave it fully inflated as that seems to keep the kids comfortable regardless of the position they want.
I recommend the inflatable footrest for any flight with kids 3+ (till their feet can reach the ground) if you can afford the space in your carry-on luggage and definitely for overnight flights. You cant purchase one here (affiliate link) for less than $16. You can check out all my favorite travel products here.
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