Whether they’re kicking your seat, running through the aisles, or throwing a tantrum on a redeye flight, kids and their behavior on planes never fails to be a hot-button issue for many travelers.
The sentiment is so popular that JetBlue has launched a new service aimed at passengers specifically looking to avoid traveling with children.
The New York-based carrier has teamed up with Virgin Voyages to plan special “kid-free” flights that ferry travelers to their port of departure for their Virgin Voyages cruise, which is an adults-only line.
Tickets for the first-of-its-kind, no-kids-allowed travel package went on sale on October 21 and reportedly sold out in only two hours.
Does this mean the trend of offering special flights exclusively for travelers 18 years of age and older might catch on across the industry?
There’s no doubt that other travel companies are taking note, especially because avoiding children on planes seems to be a perennial issue for travelers. Some carriers even take steps to prevent young children from flying in their ultra-premium cabins.
Take Emirates, for example, which in 2025 began prohibiting children under 8 years old from flying in its opulent first-class seats on tickets booked with frequent flier miles. The policy essentially bars parents with young children from using their miles to upgrade their family trip.
While these policies are controversial, they’re often applauded by stressed out travelers with little patience left to spare for misbehaving children.
“Kids on planes get people worked up because passengers are tired, crowded together in a metal tube and unable to get away,” says airline expert Gary Leff. “They’ve paid for a trip and feel they have very little control over the experience. A crying child becomes the focus of that frustration, and people start making judgments about the parents.”
With solid demand for kid-free air travel, it’s possible special adults-only flights will catch on with more airlines, cruise lines, and other travel providers.
“I think we’ll see more specialty charters like this,” Leff says. “An adults-only cruise already brings together customers who want the same destination on the same date and have chosen a vacation without children. Extending that experience to the flight makes sense. Other cruise lines and adults-only resorts could sell similar packages.”
Outside of special packages or charter flights, however, the concept becomes trickier to pull off. Regular airline schedules are already extremely complicated, and profit margins can be thin, so carriers relying on kid-free travelers to consistently fill planes across routes is a much less likely scenario. “Saying you’d prefer a flight without kids is easy. Paying more and accepting a less convenient departure time to get one is another matter,” Leff says.
But even if you’re flying on a regular old plane that allows kids of all ages, there are strategic ways to avoid sitting near children.
Here are few tips to help reduce your chances of sitting by young children, according to Leff:
- Choose an exit row: On U.S. airlines, passengers must be at least 15 to sit in an exit row seat. But be aware that children can still be in surrounding rows.
- Avoid bassinet positions on long-haul flights. These are typically bulkhead seats at the front of the cabin and tend to draw families with babies.
- Travel outside school holidays.
- Fly with a carrier that helps travelers avoid young children. Scoot’s quiet section excludes children under 12. Japan Airlines’ seat maps identify some seats occupied by passengers traveling with very young children.
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