When we landed after our first trip from New Jersey to visit family in Kentucky, the first thing my wife, Leslie, did was hitch a ride to the local dollar store. She spent close to $50 on an arsenal of airplane-friendly toys to ensure our then-four-year-old twin boys would be well occupied on the trip home. Since then, a few more nuggets of wisdom have crept into our vacation flying strategy.
First, even though headset-equipped DVD players and video games are a gift from the aviation gods, be realistic about how long you can expect your VIPs to sit still at 10,000 feet. The range of our Bonanza can make a lot of our trips with one stop, but I finally acquiesced to keeping the legs down to less than an hour and a half, with plenty of time on the ground budgeted for snacks and running around. I console myself the extra approaches and landings have been good practice.
