Three years and another child on, I have picked up a few hints and tips for flying with babies. The first and main one is: don’t.

Britain has plenty of holiday opportunities, and so does the north of France. You were silly enough to procreate, and no tropical beach is worth a family flight to it. The rest, assuming you’re going to ignore my advice, is detailed below.

1 Avoid the no-frills airlines

It doesn’t matter how family-friendly they say they are, you need allocated seats and proper backup if something goes wrong. Your three-month-old bundle of joy is not going to understand why you have to catch a bus to an entirely different country because the flight you thought you were getting has had a technical failure and your airline’s idea of customer service is an automated helpline (“Press 17 if you are stupid enough to think we care”).

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2 Spare no expense

in making the getting-to-and-from-the-airport part of the equation painless for any early-morning flight (which you should in any case try to avoid), arrive and check in the previous day, and stay at an on-site hotel overnight. If you’re driving to the airport, book the parking closest to it, with the most frequent bus transfer. You are not at the stage of your life when the Blue Hippo off-site long-stay is an option. I would even have suggested the park-and-fly valet option, until I saw that documentary about how the valet guys then take your Skoda estate for a joyride around Essex. That may still be a price worth paying: daddy is a sherpa when travelling, and the fewer stages there are to the journey, the less often he’ll have to load and unload the nine bags (while mummy pretends she has to look after baby).

3 Don’t take nine bags

This will kill you, and it isn’t necessary. Last summer, when we were still in nine-bag-and-a-buggy mode, despite only having one child, we queued at check-in behind a Spanish mother of three. She had a handbag and her youngest was tucked away happily in a cloth sling. That was it. She wasn’t panicking. She had no discernible veins bulging from her forehead. Wet wipes, a couple of nappies and one jar of baby food is all you need. Say no to buggies.

4 Board at the very, very last minute

You can do this because you have allocated seats — and, although it’s hard to resist the families-first perk, you should. The less time on the plane, the less horror.

5 If there are four of you, split up

Put the kids together, then sit at the other end of the plane. Only joking. Hahahahaha. Go two and two, one child each. This halves your chance of being with the one who decides he’s had enough of being seat-belted in.

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