Product Review: Inflatable Footrest for Airplane

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Airplane inflatable cushions or airplane inflatable footrests are all the rage right now, and I don’t mean the basic neck pillows that I invariably forget to pack before every major trip (although with Catherine’s Ultimate Packing List, I should never have this problem again). I’m talking about inflatable cushions that are designed to turn a standard economy seat into a bed for young children.

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Pricing and features vary considerably, starting from the super affordable Mode Relax, Travel Pillow Foot and Neck Rest which is available for just $22 on Amazon, to the Fly Tot, which at the time of writing, can be purchased for $131 on Amazon (double unit with footpump).

For my recent cross country six hour flight, I opted to purchase the Mode Relax, simply to test it out and see whether it would suit my preschooler.

By way of background, my preschooler is a tall three year old who does not like to snuggle for his naps. Instead, he prefers “space” and will frequently inch away from me in bed, if my arm happens to graze his (he doesn’t like to cuddle, but he does insist on being close, hence why I’m stuck waiting for him to fall asleep most nights)! Having flown a handful of cross country flights with him already, I knew that it was extremely unlikely that he would nap on the plane since he simply will not sleep on me. Thus, for $22, the Mode Relax seemed like something that might be worthwhile, if it would help him get comfortable enough to sleep on the six hour flight that happened to involve an extremely early wake up (5am!).

The travel pillows (footrest and neck pillow) comes packaged in a small black drawstring bag, that handily fit into my carry on. About the size of a small travel pillow, I didn’t mind the size, although I was worried momentarily about my ability to re-stuff the travel pillow back into the bag after inflating it. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t a problem.

I purposely waited until my toddler showed signs of being tired en route, about two hours into our six hour flight, before I suggested “making a bed” for him to sleep on. He happily agreed and was positively delighted by the “little bed” that appeared before his very eyes!

Using the stopwatch on my phone, I timed how long it took me to blow the thing up by mouth and was surprised to find that it did not take nearly as long as I expected: less than 3 minutes. My toddler loved having a place to rest his head and he quickly demanded back scratches. Given that it was his first time seeing a neck pillow, his usage of it was somewhat unorthodox, but I let it slide.

For the record, my toddler never actually fell asleep using this cushion. He was too enamored by its existence to fall asleep. But, it did help him relax comfortably on the flight and, as an added bonus, it kept him from kicking the seat of the person in front of him. For “only” $22 and given its relatively small size and light weight, it will definitely be something I take with us on future flights, at least until he stops kicking the seat back in front of him as a matter of course.

While this is a nice, inexpensive tool for us, it is by no means a must have or essential item. I would ditch it in a heart beat if there was no space in my carry on (and because of that, the inexpensive $22 option is definitely the better way to go). That said, I was glad to have an inflatable footrest on this trip as I was traveling solo with two kids and thus, needed very single possible means of entertaining my non-cuddly preschooler during the cross country flights. As an added bonus, he didn’t end up using the neck pillow so I got to use it — because, as expected, I left my behind.