One of the things that is hugely annoying about living in the Southern hemisphere is the huge mark up we seem to pay on almost everything just for living on the wrong side of the planet.

This is especially clear in things like airfares. As the Age reported today, Australians pay  twice the price to fly from Australia to the UK as the British do to fly to Australia (this is taking into account the exchange rate, comparing $Au to $Au).

Qantas’ spokeswoman yesterday said the difference between UK and Australian pricing on the route was a result of factors including seasonality, exchange rates and passenger demand.

Britons were still recovering from the effects of the global financial crisis and special discounts were needed to stimulate UK demand to travel to Australia, the spokeswoman said.

It’s hard to think of when I’ve heard a bigger load of tosh. The airfares were priced like this before the recession, despite the exchange rates or seasons. It is absolutely clear that Australians and NZers are simply being ripped off by the airline. I hardly think Australians should be made to subsidise the travel arrangements of Brits. The fact is that airlines might say it depends on the exchange rates but they never lower the prices for Australians when the Aussie dollar is high (as it is now). And um, excuse me airlines, but if twice as many Aussies flew to the UK and back, then surely you wouldn’t need any British bottoms on the seats at all??

WOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

YEEEEEE-HAAAA!!!!!

ALL-RIGHTIE!!!!!!

I think maybe I need to go change some seat allocations…

Or reason 248 why carry on luggage is a good idea.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo&amp

So no queue cutting after all

This is really interesting to us because in the weekend SGM and I were just discussing clear air turbulence with the kids. You can see really good definitions of the different types of turbulence on the Australian Government Civil Aviation Safety Authority. Basically clear air turbulence is turbulence that occurs without any warning at all. Also it is generally more severe at the rear of the plane. The CASA recommend that passengers keep their seat belts fastened even when the seat belt signs are turned off. The thing I find most disturbing about the effects of turbulence is that children under two, infants and babies are often travelling without their own seat. In this news article, an infant was one of the people who were injured. Surely infants and babies need as much, if not more protection than adult passengers?

Hulllloooooo Australian Airports? Is anybody home? Is anybody listening?

I would strongly, strongly recommend that if you have a baby and you need to travel to Europe, you fly via Amsterdam. Kudos to Schipol Airport for a fabulous idea brilliantly executed. I give them an A++

Seriously though, jet lag is absolutely hideous and I have been scouring the internet looking for the best tips to deal with jet lag for children. The bad news is that there are very few options and most are hit and miss or rely on a placebo effect at best. Before we go any further I have some genuine advice,

Now I am the sort of person who gets jet lagged travelling between Australia and NZ – and that’s a two hour time difference at most. So I am super aware of the horrible side effects of being jet lagged. The last time we did a major international trip, I was six months pregnant and also got horribly motion sick. As a result I was completely unable to deal with the Tube in London and the escalators and general commuting crush. We had to spend the all out time in London using the double decker buses instead (which was probably a whole lot nicer anyway).

I think the most important thing when planning a trip is to build in a buffer. Don’t plan on doing major attractions or theme parks on the day you arrive or even the day after. A lot of the sites I’ve looked at talk about it taking up to 5 days to adjust to the local time zones. (If you are travelling for 5 days or less, you might as well stick with your home time zones as much as possible).“Overcoming Jetlag” at Trekaroo goes into more details about starting things slowly. In our upcoming Europe trip we are starting with three nights at a campsite on a lake with a nice pool complex. Our plan is to be able to blob as much as possible for the first three days, plus naturally getting bright light at the right time by being in the pool. For the return trip, we’re scheduled to arrive at the beginning of the weekend – this means we have the whole weekend at home to recover from the flights and the change in time zones.

While staying awake once you reach your destination may be practical advice for adults, it’s not so easy for children. Exposure to sunlight is the most recommended activity. There are a couple of websites that help you calculate the best times to get a dose of bright light.
Fleet Street Clinic Jet Lag Calculator
Bodyclock: The Jet Lag Calculator
Alertness Solutions Jet Lag Calculator This is a bit different – it is a pdf chart to print off and fill in the time zones. It lets you see when your natural alert and sleep times are.

On the Fleet Street Clinic pages you will see a recommendation for using Melatonin. This is widely available in the USA but requires a prescription in Australia (even to import it). Melatonin seems to get very mixed reviews and it’s certainly not something I’d be prepared to give to my children. Help Me to Sleep has more indepth information on jet lag remedies for adults such as melatonin. A product that I have tried for myself that is a kind of precursor to melatonin is 5-HTP. “A Norwegian study showed that 5-HTP can affect sleep patterns by increasing the levels of serotonin, which is needed for sleep. Serotonin is needed to produce melatonin, a hormone which regulates sleep-wake cycles.” You can read more about 5-HTP here and here. Although you cannot buy 5-HTP widely in Australia it is easy to order online from many NZ stockists and there are no problems importing it. Again, it’s not something I’m planning to give to my kids, but I am intending to take some for myself on our trip.

So, non-invasive, practical things I am going to do to help lessen the impact of jet lag on my kids…

1. A month before start changing their bed-time. because of the direction we are flying, I’m going to make this later by an hour each week (yay Homeschooling rocks, plus I’m making sure we have no morning appointments those weeks).
2. In the week before we leave, I’ll be talking to my kids about what to expect, sleeping on the plane, and quiet activities to do if they wake up and their parents are still asleep!!!
3. To help with sleeping on the plane (and when we arrive) I’ve bought Badgers Sleep Balm and Badgers Night Night Balm from Uncommon Scents. I wasn’t sure which one would work best, so I got both to try out before we leave. (And doesn’t the cute picture of the Badger just make you want to snooze?) I also have ear plugs, eye masks  and white noise to put on the ipods. Powrnaps Sleep System Combo Pack 26-minute Nap Audio System & Easy2sleep Audio System I got from Amazon. Binaural Beats and Ambiscience Pure Sleep are two free iphone apps that have relaxing white noise soundtracks.
4. Once we arrive I’m going to try the acupressure points recommended in No More Jet Lag I figure what is $10 when we have spent $$$$ going on this holiday? If it works, fantastic, if it doesn’t we’re really no worse off.
5. As recommended in the Trekaroo article above, we’ll be stocking up on snacks once we arrive

These articles also have great tips:

Delicious Baby: Jet Lag

Travel with your kids: What you can do about jet lag

The Babies Online Blog has a hilarious article on dealing with jet lag and toddlers.

And look at that, no Aussie airports on the list at all. Auckland with a fraction of the population beats them all. Still if it’s any consolation, US airports don’t make the cut either.

Moral of the story – if you want to visit a great Airport, go to Asia.

While this sounds good on the surface, I would imagine it will make it harder for consumers to earn and redeem points. As the article states, it’s part of a broader restructure of the airline’s loyalty program. Given the current economic climate, you can bet this means they want to give away less. You’re going to have to shop harder for those miles!

This is hilarious. A wonderful slide show of airline cartoons. Although maybe better to look  at them AFTER we get back…