Can I book a flight for a child or an infant travelling with their parents on my website?

Yes, in most cases you can. Flight booking APIs normally treat adults, children and infants as separate passenger types, so your search page can ask how many of each are travelling and the fares that come back will already be priced for that mix. Your customer then enters each traveller's name and date of birth, and the booking goes to the airline with the correct passenger type against each name.

There are a few rules that come from the airline rather than from your website. Children and infants are judged by their age on the date of travel, not the date of booking, so a child who has a birthday before the trip may need to be booked as the older type. Infants below the airline's age limit usually travel on an adult's lap without their own seat, and most airlines only allow a limited number of infants per adult. Some airlines also let you buy a seat for an infant, which is treated more like a child booking.

How much of this works smoothly depends on the supplier behind your search. Full service airlines generally return proper child and infant fares, while some low cost carriers handle them differently or need the infant added as an extra rather than as a passenger. Children travelling with no adult at all are almost never bookable through an API, because airlines handle unaccompanied minors manually with their own forms and fees.

Before you advertise family travel, run a test search with an adult, a child and an infant together and check that the fare, the taxes and the ticket all come back correctly, and ask us which of your connected suppliers support infant seats.