Why every parent should pack a flight logbook for their kids every time they travel

A reader just asked me a great question: “I know your kids have used a flight log for years, but I don’t recall seeing you recommend one. I want to get some for my 3 grandkids, 6, 8, & 10.” ~ Len M.

I’ve been meaning to write about how great logbooks are for a while now so this is the perfect opportunity. Thanks for the great question, Len! Travel logbooks are one of my top essentials when I travel but I never even knew they existed until my wife and I took our son on his first flight when he was eight months old and we flew to see family in Canada and Connecticut.

I wrote about the whole experience, which had a few nerve-racking moments and which you can read here. In the story, I wrote: “Towards the end of the flight, the flight attendants surprised Jack with a flight journal titled “Junior Aviator Logbooks,” which was signed by the pilots and had all kinds of info about our flight. It was really cool.”

These logbooks include space for the date, flight number, aircraft type, tail number, to/from destinations, nautical miles traveled, flight crew signatures, as well as space for comments. While researching this article, I found another old post where I wrote: “I’ve since found out that pretty much every American Airlines flight offers Junior Aviator Logbooks onboard, as we’ve been offered one on multiple flights. The original book had space for 18 flights, but the last one we received had room for 30 flights, so it looks like the airline has updated them. In addition to the flight info, the new one has colorful plane diagrams and interesting and detailed aircraft facts.”

I’m kicking myself for often refusing the books (we didn’t need more at the time) because American no longer makes them. My son is now on his seventh book and my four-year-old daughter, whose travels got foiled by Covid, is on her third book.

I photocopied some of the blank pages in the AA logbook to create my own but it doesn’t look great. So I’ve been researching which logbook to buy my kids so I asked my son’s classmates’ father, who is a pilot for American. He told me that he has pilots sign his eight-year-old son’s logbook too every time they fly. However, he doesn’t use AA’s, he uses and recommends The Standard Pilot Log. He has a black one for his son and a pink one for his daughter. He linked to mypilotstore.com but they charge $3.95 for shipping so if you have Amazon Prime, you can save some money by purchasing through them.

BTW: You can buy the American Airlines logbook on eBay for a whopping $65, which is crazy because the other options are not only better they’re much cheaper.

If you want to go the free route, the next time you fly British Airways, ask the flight attendants if they have one of their Skyflyers logbooks. They gave one to Jack on his first BA flight in 2018 and it appears they still offer them on some flights. The BA book is a lot smaller and more basic, but it has room for 51 flights. See the photo above.

I love keeping track of my kids’ flights because they will always know the places they’ve been and if they ever become aviation geeks like me, they will also know the aircraft types they’ve flown on.

It’s also a great way to get friendly with the crew because when we board, our kids always give a bag of chocolates to the crew and I hand them the logbooks, asking for the pilots to sign them when they have a chance. The pilots are almost always excited to have aviation enthusiasts onboard and usually either invite them into the cockpit or come to our seats to say hello.

Personally, I’ve been fascinated with air travel all my life. Still to this day, I cannot fathom how these huge, heavy, magnificent metal birds can get off the ground with so many people (and cargo) and do it safely and smoothly. I think most travelers take air travel for granted and when I feel like I start to too, I remind myself how lucky I am to live in this jet age. I think about what my ancestors would have had to do to travel across the country 100 years ago and what a huge ordeal that would have been. If they knew that I’ve gone to Hawaii for dinner (twice), they wouldn’t believe it. I still can’t.

If you subscribe to my newsletter, then you probably know that growing up, we didn’t fly very much. Just a handful of times before I entered high school; most of our vacations were road trips. Then in high school, I became not only afraid to fly but leave the house at one point. It’s a long story how I conquered my fears but one of the ways I took my mind off of the trip, was by writing all the flight details in a flight journal as soon as I sat down in my seat. Once the plane was airborne, I was fine.

I think I started recording my notes on a small notepad but then I graduated to a beautiful leather travel journal from Graphic Image. I used to get a new one every year because I flew so much (100+ flights) but once I had my first child, I cut my travels down significantly so these days, I go through one every two to three years.

So if you’re traveling with a little one or want to get your kids or grandkids a lasting memento, get them a logbook or ask the flight attendants on your next fight if they have a logbook for kids. If they do have one, please let me know which airline!

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