👶 A travel hack for the kids

Estimated read time: 3 minutes and 47 seconds

Good morning and happy Wednesday, or as I call it, “Marriott day.”

You see, I pick a day toward the beginning of every month when I call Marriott to fix all of the issues and mistakes they’ve made over the course of the previous month.

Yep, I literally have to do this every month…

Make sure you pay attention to things like Elite Nights, points, etc., that are supposed to be in your account - it’s extremely common for hotel programs (mainly Marriott) to get these things wrong about 25-30% of the time, or not credit you at all.

Now that we’ve gotten the first travel tip out of the way, here’s the good stuff:

• 👶 How to save 25% on award flights for kids

• ✈️ United makes a major accessibility update to its planes

• 👋 Meet Tom, the world’s most frequent flyer

👶 How to save 25% on award flights for kids

So I was doing some research recently around families and kids. As it turns out, there are some people in the world who have kids… and traveling with them can be tough.

Mainly, it’s tough to find enough seats for a whole family when booking with points. And when you do, it can get expensive.

Thankfully, Flying Blue (the points program for KLM and Air France) offers a 25% discount on award tickets for kids!

Here’s how this works:

• The child must be traveling with an adult to get the discount

• The discount only works for Air France and KLM flights, NOT partner flights

• The discount is only valid for kids between the ages of 2 and 11

• Screaming children will be charged an extra $5 per scream during the flight

That last one isn’t true, although… I’m not opposed.

Booking a ticket with this discount is surprisingly easy, as you can do the whole thing online and avoid talking to any of those pesky humans we all hate interacting with.

On the KLM or Air France website, simply add a passenger in the search area and select “Child.” 👇

The search results will reflect the discount already and show you the total amount of points, taxes, and fees for all passengers.

For example, I ran a search for Dallas to Vienna for later this year and selected one adult and one child.

As you can see, the resulting flight I found automatically incorporated the 25% discount on the child’s ticket, saving around 5,000 miles.

Obviously, if you have a bigger family, the savings here could be significant.

Now I know what you’re wondering….

If you book a Promo Reward (the monthly Flying Blue discount award flights), will you still get the discount?

In theory, yes, you should, according to the policy. In practice, however, when I ran some searches for promo rewards, the child ticket price stayed the same as the adult… 

So the jury’s out on that one. 🤷‍♂️

When it comes to promo rewards like the one above, the prices are already so low that I wouldn’t be too concerned about the 2,800 points you’d otherwise save with the 25% discount.

Still, this is an awesome hack for family travelers looking to save money and points on a trip. Flying Blue has some of the cheaper award flights to/from Europe as it is, so this added discount makes their program even more enticing for a wider variety of travelers.

✈️ United makes a major accessibility update to its planes

This is really cool, y’all. Any opportunity that allows more people to get out and travel is a definite win… and United is doing just that.

The airline recently announced that they’ll be adding Braille to their planes in order to help visually impaired and/or legally blind passengers find their designated seats and navigate the lavatory with increased independence.

This type of tactile signage will be displayed on the overhead bins to designate specific rows and seats, and you’ll also find it both inside and outside the lavatories.

United is also considering expanding beyond this initial Braille signage to include things like raised arrows throughout the cabin, but to date, that hasn’t been implemented.

For those of us who don’t have a visual impairment, such “automatic” tasks like finding your seat or navigating to the bathroom are things that we all take for granted, I’m sure.

It’s still kind of crazy to me how far behind the airline industry is when it comes to accessible guidelines that you find pretty much everywhere else (and that are required and standard practice).

BUT it’s super rad that we’re starting to see more of these changes take place 😎

So far, United has retrofitted about a dozen of its planes, but it’s hoping to add this Braille signage to its entire fleet by the end of 2026.

The next time I fly United, I’m definitely going to take a look around to see if the Braille signage has been added to my plane!

👋 Meet Tom, the world’s most frequent flyer

Here at Daily Drop, we think it pays to be loyal to an airline - especially when you care about perks like elite status, etc.

But this guy has taken airline loyalty to a WHOLE new level by racking up a whopping 23 million miles flown on United Airlines.

There’s actually a super interesting story about how and why he’s able to fly SO much with United, so I recommend you check out this fun article by Ben over at One Mile at a Time. 👇

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That’s all for today, y’all! I was pretty impressed to learn that United has a loyal member who’s flown 23 million miles JUST with United… That’s pretty insane… #lifegoals, I guess.

Which airline are you most loyal to? Have you ever flown with kids? Let me know by replying to this email or reaching out on social media.

Have a great day ❤️

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