Flying with small children onboard

On friday I performed my first flight with a non-pilot passenger, and that passenger was so enthralled that he wants to take up PPL training by himself now.

This also means that the next step, flying with my family onboard, is looming on the horizon: not right now but certainly within the next months and after a couple more flights with others. The questions leading up to this scenario are often discussed on EuroGA, e.g. how many wifes and several children don’t like to fly with you in a spamcan etc. pp. Let us please keep these things out of this topic and focus on the practicalities of
Flying in a four-seater with the spouse and two small children as passengers

To keep matters as concrete as possible:

• The aircraft in question will be a rented Cessna 172R.
• The children are 1.5 and nearly 3 years old respectively. W&B shouldn’t be a problem with their total weight being 25kg.
• The first flight will be a short hop around the block: Depart from Hannover-Langenhagen Airport EDDV, fly around the city, land again (approx. 30 mins unless we are put in a hold).
• If that doesn’t scare the family away from GA flying forever, the next flight after that will be to the island of Juist (EDWJ) as requested by my wife, a little over an hour of flight time (120 nm DCT).

Now my questions (and initial thoughts in italic):

• How to arrange the seating? Put the wife on the RHS? This gives us nearly no chance to calm and interact with the children during the flight. Put one of the children in the RHS? They wouldn’t be of any help to me and could be distracting for my piloting. My wife would have to reach them from the backseat, not easy. Can you put two toddlers and the wife in the back row?
• How to secure the children? We have two modern child car seats but these are too bulky to be put into the C172 and need a car-type seat-belt or isofix-adapter to be securely fitted. What are the alternatives?
• What headsets/hearing-protection to get and use? I have one childrens pilot headset, the P51C Cadet model sold to me by another EuroGA member for a bargain, should I buy another? The 1.5 year old will probably want a headset too when she sees her brother have one. She’s also very talkactive for her age, so I’m afraid a simple earmuffs for hearing protection won’t suffice. The wife can get a used headset from the aircraft rental company for free, or should I buy her one with ANR?
• How to deal with the intercomm inflight? Knowing my children they will probably talk alot in flight, unless they fall asleep. This could be distracting. If I isolate them and my wife from my intercomm, I might miss important information and cannot answer questions which my wife surely will have inflight
• How to calm down my wife before and during the flight? Everything I read about the topic so far points to getting the passengers of a GA flight involved and explaining as much as possible. My passenger on friday certainly had a good time due to being involved in the flight and going through checklists with me. This will be more difficult with my wife as she also has to take care of the children and will possibly not sit in the RHS, see the first question
• What other preparations should I take? I guess other EuroGA members who have prior experience with flights with the family can point out more food for thought…

Further thoughts:

• Weather on the day of flight should be CAVOK, but I’d like the first flight to be in colder air, as thermics on a summer CAVOK day can make the ride quite bumpy
• On the first flight I will stay low anyways due to it being a short sightseeing flight. What about the cross-country? Bumble along at 2000ft in good old German fashion as I’m used to or climb to a proper cruise altitude of say 6500ft (FL065 here)?
• The infamous EuroGA evergreen question about onboard means of bladder relief will be solved by diapers for my children. I’m afraid this will get more complicated soon, as my 3 year old has successfully commenced potty training…
• A lot will hinge on these initial flights. If my family don’t wants to fly with me, I will be severely limited in my flying until the children have grown up and will remain a low hours pilot. Or have to give up due to lack of currency. So I have to make these flights count!

Note that I did read Flying With Family by the AOPA , among other articles on the issue, but I would also like to hear directly from fellow pilots what they think. A EuroGA search didn’t bring up a matching topic, although I’m certain the issue was skimmed in several prior topics, for example my own Buying a family plane? (Disclaimer: That topic is out of date and I’m not in the market to buy a plane right now)

I am also aware that the answer to everything might be that it is yet to early to fly with my family, both due to my lack of flight experience (60 hrs TT) and my childrens’ young age, but the material I’ve read so far doesn’t clearly support this view.

I look forward to an enlightening discussion of this topic!