Decision to Request a Bassinet
If you’ve ever flown long distance with a baby, you know how nice it can be to have a seat with a bassinet for naps or overnight flights. However, there are only a few seats that can accommodate bassinets, so the next question is always how to secure one for you and your baby? The process seems to be a bit different for each airline, so I wanted to share my experience requesting one with Delta for an 11-hour overnight flight with our baby since I read some conflicting things about the process.
Step 1 - Call Delta Help Center
I thought I could add a bassinet request online but discovered that I had to actually call Delta’s reservation line to make a request for a bassinet seat. The process took about 15 minutes to get ahold of an agent and have them add the request to both our flights. Even though it was a round-trip ticket, they had to add the request to each leg.
Step 2 - Verify Bassinet Seat at Your Gate
After adding our bassinet requests, the agent notified me that we’d still have to check in right away with the gate agent on each of our flights to verify that we had a bassinet seat as they are subject to availability. This seemed like a redundancy, so I asked the agent if you actually need to call to put in the request if it’s subject to availability when you show up with the gate agent actually having control over whether you get a bassinet seat. She didn’t have a good answer, just told me that you do indeed need to do both - call to make the request and then check in with the gate agent. Maybe having the request in the system gives you priority over other parents who simply show up at the gate and request a bassinet?
Did it Work?
Fortunately, yes! We did end up with bassinet seats on both flights. Maybe you can skip the redundancy and just show up at the gate and ask for a bassinet seat, but I wouldn’t risk it since not getting one can make your life so much more miserable and I’m guessing the folks who have called in advance get priority over first come first serve requests. Plus, I’ve found that calling Delta’s customer service usually isn’t too painful of an experience so worth making the request. You can learn more about Delta’s bassinets a.k.a SkyCots and all the rest of their services for folks traveling with infants on their infant travel page.
Has anyone else had a different experience? We and our readers would especially like to know if you called and put in a request for a bassinet seat in advance and then showed up at the gate and were told none were available. Leave us a comment!