I've Bean Travelling

Bom dia! We have just returned home from our first trip to Europe with little Teddy, who celebrated his first birthday while we were in Lisbon, Portugal. It was a wonderful trip overall and I look forward to sharing recaps of our itinerary in my forthcoming posts. To start, I thought I’d write a little about the preparation and lessons learned from our first transatlantic adventure as a family.

Flight booking headaches with Sata

Because we split our itinerary into half in the Azores and half on mainland Portugal, we ended up flying on three different airlines: Azores Airlines, Ryanair, and Tap Air.

Our inbound flight was on Azores Airlines, otherwise known as Sata, which offers direct flights to Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel from Toronto. This was appealing because the flight was just a little over 5 hours and very manageable. However, my first travel planning headache occurred when I attempted to book Teddy his own seat so that we could bring his car seat on board. I had to make multiple phone calls to Sata’s main office, as the first person I spoke to could not grasp the concept of booking an infant his own seat despite a clearly documented policy on Sata’s own website. She tried telling me to bid for an extra seat for myself which I could then use for Teddy, but I didn’t want to take the chance of not winning the bid and having to carry him in my lap for an overnight flight. I ended up calling back numerous times and being kept on hold for over an hour before I could speak to someone who could do the booking for me.

Then, I had to deal with a whole debacle of having our car seat “approved” for the flight. I was instructed to email Sata information about the seat including its dimensions and a photo of its approval seal for use in aircraft. We have the Cosco Scenera Next which is definitely approved for air travel and is lightweight and narrow enough to fit into small plane seats even with the armrests down. However, I had to send numerous emails back and forth with Sata, repeating the same information, until I finally got the okay to bring the seat.

Once I finally got all our seats confirmed, I received a message from Sata 48 hours before our flight that we had all been switched to seats in separate rows. Yes, this included Teddy, who was assigned a window seat beside two strangers. This would obviously be illegal (and unpleasant for the passengers sitting beside him!) so I called and emailed the airline to switch us all back to the same row. Fortunately this was sorted out easily at the airport.

Once we got on the flight we were fine. We were able to check Teddy’s travel crib and stroller for free and had him sit in his car seat on board. He slept for most of the flight except when he was awoken during meal service. I still don’t understand why meals are served in the middle of the night during red eye flights, but I guess it’s a regulatory requirement for a meal to be provided at the mid-point of flights over a certain duration.

Lesson learned from Sata: Speak to another agent if one gives you pushback on purchasing a seat for your baby, but be prepared to be on the phone for a long time.

Ryanair – more like “Lyin’ Air”

After a great time in Sao Miguel, we departed for the next leg of our trip in mainland Portugal. Ryanair had a morning flight from Ponta Delgada to Lisbon which best suited our schedule, but I will forever regret trying out this airline. I suppose most travellers within Europe are familiar with Ryanair, as it has a reputation for being a terrible low budget airline. We’ve flown many low budget airlines uneventfully in the past and I was hoping that we would be alright for a short two hour flight but boy, was I wrong!

The initial booking process for Ryanair was pretty straightforward. Like Sata, they also have a clearly documented policy on their website stating that a car seat can be brought on board if the infant has their own purchased seat. I had to make a separate booking under the name “Extra Infant Seat” and then they linked it to my main reservation. I did this all through Ryanair’s live chat function and had no problems with the booking process.

The bad experience came once we boarded our flight. We had checked in without issues and informed the check-in and gate agents that we were bringing the car seat on board, to which they didn’t bat an eye. However, once we set foot on the plane, a flight attendant quickly confiscated the seat, saying that car seats are not permitted and that all passengers under 2 years must be held as lap infants. She disregarded the policy that I showed her on Ryanair’s website, later coming up with the excuse that we had the wrong type of car seat lacking a 5-point harness, which was blatantly incorrect; the Cosco Scenera met all of Ryanair’s criteria.

I ended up having to hold Teddy in my lap for the entire flight, secured with only a sketchy looking seat belt extender loop that he nearly wriggled out of multiple times. The seatbelt sign was on for almost half the flight due to turbulence and I had to grip onto Teddy lest he become a projectile. Our purchased seat for him was unusable since we didn’t have our car seat for him to be fastened into.

This experience was not only in contravention of Ryanair’s own policy, it went against guidelines from the European Aviation Safety Agency which strongly recommends the use of approved child seats on board an aircraft. There is substantial evidence that seatbelt loop extenders, like the one I was provided on Ryanair, are not safe — in the case of forward acceleration such as during an emergency landing, the infant acts as a shock absorber for the attached adult passenger and would effectively end up crushed. In fact, they are even banned by the FAA, so are not used on flights in North American airspace.

Of course, Ryanair refused to provide any refund of my unused extra infant seat and has no response to my complaint about the safety regulation violation.

Lesson learned from Ryanair: Don’t fly this airline if you value your child’s safety.

Better times with Tap Air

After the horrible experience with Ryanair, I was nervous about our flight home from Lisbon, especially as this would be our longest flight at over 8 hours.

We flew with Tap Air which was a stark contrast to Ryanair. The booking process for Teddy’s own seat was seamless, requiring just a quick chat with an agent at the call centre and they added a note on his reservation about the car seat. On board, we were greeted by friendly flight attendants who only needed to check the seat’s approval seal and we boarded without issues.

The cabin crew was helpful with Teddy, allowing us to fill his bottles with water for formula and even giving him a little gift set with a toy and bib. This was one of the better economy level flight experiences that I’ve had even with a baby, and I would fly Tap Air again if we ever return to Portugal.

The only problem we had with Tap Air was during check-in, which went at a glacial pace. We had two rude ladies butt ahead of us in line so it took over an hour to check our travel crib and we had to run through passport check and to the gate, with 20 minutes to spare. I should note that travellers with children do get priority access in lines in Portugal, including at the airport. When airport staff saw us with Teddy, they redirected us to the family lines for security and boarding. This was how we actually managed to make it onto our flight!

Lesson learned from Tap Air: Good airline for low cost direct flights to mainland Portugal, but make sure to arrive early especially if you have checked luggage.

Finding baby supplies in Portugal

Given the exorbitant fees for checked luggage these days, we fly carry-on only. We’ve managed to do this even with a baby because we don’t pack much in terms of disposable/perishable baby items, opting to stock up at our destination.

This was easy to do on our first couple family trips as we were in the United States so were generally able to find the same brands that we have in Canada. It was a bit more of a puzzle on our first time in Europe.

In Ponta Delgada and Lisbon, we discovered two big supermarket chains called Continente and Pingo Doce. Continente in particular has a decent selection of baby supplies including diapers (common brand is Dodot) and baby purees.

Compared to North America however, it was difficult to find a good variety of baby snacks and foods. I only found two savoury purees and biscuits for snacks. There are lots of foods in Portuguese cuisine that are probably suitable for infants doing baby-led weaning (finger foods) but Teddy is an incredibly messy self feeder so we usually like having some purees for spoon feeding on hand when we are out and about. Unfortunately Teddy didn’t really get a great solid diet while on this trip so although he is supposed to be weaning formula at this age, we ended up relying on it for most of his nutrient intake.

Formula was easy to find and the common brand here was Nestle NAN which was good enough for Teddy. We try to avoid Nestle products out of principle but it was the only brand I saw at Continente and Pingo Doce. The upside was that formula in Europe is considerably lower cost than in Canada. The same can that cost us only 13 euros in Portugal would have gone for upwards of $50 CAD.

While planning this trip, I didn’t find much information online about navigating the logistics of travelling Portugal with a baby, so hopefully this post will help someone out there wanting more details on how we did it and what to avoid.

Up next, more on all the adventures we had in Azores and Lisbon!