Yesterday I flew from Dubai to Toronto with my two sons (4 years old and 7 months old) and without my husband. My husband will follow in a few days. I was really confident when I booked the flight that it would be no problem to fly 13 hours alone with the children, but I’m not sure I would do it again.
The children were really well behaved on the flight. The baby stayed close to his normal sleep patterns, and was generally quite pleasant. He did not eat any proper food for the whole day, he just breastfed, but otherwise his day was fairly routine. My older son had a pleasant flight. He watched movies nearly the whole time (we don’t have a TV at home, so he was getting 6 months’ worth of TV viewing in one day). He watched, in this order: Cars; The Princess and the Frog; Toy Story; Toy Story 2; Cars (yes, again); Dumbo; and some more of Cars. He did not whine, cry, complain, run around, pester those around us or bug me. He also didn’t play with any of the toys or activities that I had brought for him – the lure of the TV was too sweet. He also ate the food that he was served and he had a nap when I asked him to.
Some of the other parents were not quite so lucky on the flight – their little tyrants had tantrums, fought with siblings, ran around the plane and were generally unpleasant.
Unfortunately, the airline, Emirates, seemed to be having a bad flight. Normally I am a very enthusiastic Emirates customer, and I have raved about their service in the past. But, on this very long flight, it all went out the window.
It started as soon as we boarded the plane. We had booked our seats in the bulkhead row so that I could make use of a bassinette for the baby. When we boarded, we were in an interior row with no bulkhead. I started to panic and complained to the stewardess immediately. All she said to me was “It’s not my fault.” That might be true, but I was trying to get the problem fixed, not assign blame.
As more people boarded the plane, more people were complaining about their seats. Other parents also wanted bassinettes. Some window and aisle seat requests didn’t come out right. It was a mess. I asked again about the bassinette and the stewardess once again told me that it was not her fault. I got frustrated and said “It isn’t mine either – I booked the right seats.” After I said this, a couple of people agreed loudly with me, so I piped down. Making her mad would not get me what I wanted.
After everyone had found their seats, I whined some more – I was starting to panic about the flight with the kids alone and no-where to put the baby. Eventually they found a way to move me to a bulkhead. Strangely, the bassinette row had 4 unrelated people, and two businessmen agreed to move for me. I was very grateful to them!
Once I had moved, our carry-on luggage became a problem. Because all of the passengers were loaded, there was no space in the overhead bins for our things. So, it got stowed all over the plane – I had terrible access to diapers. But the bassinette was worth it.
The plane took off and I got the baby to sleep in the bassinet, and then the steward came around with the distraction swag for the kids. We were given a backpack. We have been given the same backpack on a couple of other flights and usually it is filled with games, toys and distractions. This time, it had only 2 small things inside, compared with the usual six or seven. I wondered why, and I soon had the answer….they had run out and they had clearly split the gear into smaller portions. The two children sitting near us got some games but no backpacks. For some reason, one of these kids started to cry bitterly for a pack. When her father asked for one, the stewardess wandered off and returned with a small toy, which made the child even more upset. I thought about giving her my sons pack (he already has one), but he growled at me when I mentioned it, and I decided to keep my own kid happy.
Then they served the meals. They brought all of the kids out the kid’s meal, except my son. The woman I was sitting next to noticed this and stopped the stewardess for me to ask her for one. She said in a snotty voice “you have to order one when you book the flight.” I was ready for this. I said “I did, here is my flight paper. I requested a kid’s meal and booked a bassinette seat. Neither has worked out properly.” Then she said they were out, but she would check. She came back a few minutes later with a kids meal and snack pack. Normally the snack pack is full of snacks. This time, there were only three tiny, undesirable snacks. When the adult’s meals came, I was offered scrambled eggs or omelette. I didn’t really care, but I picked the eggs. Of course, I got the omelette.
The hours on the flight passed by sloooowwwwllllyyy. There was a little count-down clock telling us exactly how much time was left, and it was visible all of the time. I decided to make a game of it – try not to look at the clock more than once an hour. The first time, there was 11 hours remaining, and then the second time I checked there was 9.5 hours remaining. This was pretty good. Then I waited for what I thought was an hour and checked again – only 10 minutes had gone by! I was pleased to note that we were over half way at one point, until I figured out that there were six hours left!
During the flight I had the distraction of caring for the baby and the periodic meals. I tried to walk around once an hour, and on my walking route I found people to chat with. For a while, when I could tear him away from the TV, my older son played stickers with another little boy.
They served us meals periodically. One of the meals had 3 choices – mustard chicken, veg curry or mutton curry. I hate mustard and curry! That was a disappointing meal. There was a yummy pizza meal, where, of course, they forgot to serve my son pizza. I had to ask and make a bit of a fuss.
The service was patchy throughout the flight. They would forget to serve an entire row drinks, or leave someone’s trash when they picked up the rest of the trash. At one point, an overhead bin was stuck wide open and packed with luggage while the fasten seatbelt sign was on and we went through turbulence for 45 minutes. This was unnerving because my kids and I were right in the trajectory of the luggage.
At the end of the flight, we disembarked last because our hand baggage was all over the plane. That got me antsy – not a good thing when you are heading to border control.
The next flight we have to take is only 4 hours – it should be a cake walk!
In the airport, we were directed to wait for one of the transport vehicles. When I got there, the waiting area was packed with people (most of who seemed entirely able bodied, but who am I to judge…) so I took the kids and we walked a long way to customs. When we got to customs, there was a massive room packed with people. A lady in a uniform at the door was shouting “connection go here” and “no connection go here” problem was, she was doing exactly the same hand movement after both of these phrases. When I got near to her, I asked and she just kept doing the same thing. I decided to join the line and I lined up behind a lady with a red suitcase.
A bunch of other passengers proceeded to try to shove in front of me and a lot of them were successful. I decided that the best way to deal with this was to stand behind the queue jumpers and make sarcastic and passive aggressive comments about people not waiting their turn. This, as you can imagine, was incredibly useful as a tactic in recovering our rightful spot in line – not!
The line was grim. I could not see the whole room, but I counted 9 switchbacks each with about 100 people in it. Everyone was fresh off of their flights and incredibly grouchy – me included. I waited through the first row and a man came up to me. He was in a blue uniform and he asked if I was a Canadian citizen. I said I was and he then led me and the kids into a “secret row” right to the front of the line. I felt so popular as all of the other passengers glared at me as we walked by – but I didn’t care. My 4 year old son picked this moment to lose all ability to wheel his carryon and started to tear up in that over-tired way kids do. I told him that he could wheel his bag, and I’d seen him do it. Just straighten it up and get going. Another mother (in the part of the line that we had just skipped) said loudly to her friend “I prefer positive parenting to criticising” and then she turned to her little darling and praised her immensely for getting her Smarties out of a container. Her child started crying, which, at the time and in the context I thought was funny.
Our customs interview was longer than usual, given our unique circumstances, but we made it through. Then we went on to get our luggage. Our flight had been completely unloaded before we had arrived in the luggage area, and the staff had quite helpfully strewn our luggage all over the luggage retrieval area. I did a quick wander and immediately found 1 bag. I found a second after a while as well. But, the third was not there. I wandered the area 4 times and I could not find it. Finally, just when I was about to start the missing luggage paperwork, another passenger returned it. Whew!
Next we took a taxi to the hotel and tried to stay awake until a reasonable bed time. I gave my son an incredibly nutritious dinner of chips and apple juice.
The kids actually slept through the night! They were both up for one hour in the middle of the night, but other than that slept well. In the morning, we took the streetcar to visit some relatives and we had a pretty good day.
