I know what you mean about dreading the looks from other passengers! We're taking our very full-on DS on a big trip to meet DP's family in May, and I'm already stressing about how to keep him entertained in such confined spaces for 14+ hours.
DP used to work for an airline, and his advice is try and get a night flight if possible. Book a baby bassinet and an aisle seat if you can, too. Take something familiar like a sleeping bag or blanket/wrap because it gets cold in the plane, and have your nappy bag well-organised and in reach. There are some restrictions for how much liquid you can carry (water, toiletries etc) but I'm not sure how these apply to baby's milk, food etc, so maybe check that with the airline. I would recommend a change of clothes for both you and bub in your carry-on bag too. And maybe skip any annoying musical or loud toys...
I found on our recent flight to Qld I was really worried about the pressure hurting DS's ears, but he fell asleep just before departure and it didn't bother him at all. He was fine on the return trip too, and he was very much awake! Didn't seem affected at all, and didn't want to feed.
I think being able to get up and walk up and down the aisles will be helpful, and hope that you get decent, friendly cabin crew who can heat up water for bottles if you need it, and even entertain your DS for a bit. But I reckon if anyone's going to give you "looks" then they can probably just get over it. You have every right to travel, and it's stressful enough travelling with kids that you don't need to be worrying about other people! Stay calm and hopefully your DS will too. At least, I'm hoping that will work for us!
HTH, and there's some more useful advice from other people too because I need all the help I can get too!
Plenty of food and drink, and definitely some familiar blankets, toys etc for him.
Lots o little things to keep him amused too. Books, singing toys etc.
I strongly recommend making sure he is either sucking a dummy, or having a drink at take off and landing. its not worth taking the risk about the pressure in his ears.
If he is sleeping, my DH used to cup his hands over DS' ears really tightly. This is also a really effective way.
And don't worry about the looks from other people. Too bad for them
I took my 10 month old on a 5 hour flight by myself last year and had a bassinet and eisle seat (a must). I found though that she was way too interested in everything else going on around her.
I took my baby bjorn (even though she was too big to carry for a long time in it) and This is the only way I got her to go to sleep. Walking in the small space near the toilets, up and down, up and down, until she was finally asleep, and I could sit down with her to continue her sleep.
Only other advice - be prepared and organised and use the flight attendents as much as possible (to assist - most are great)
DD has been on 4 flights which were all perfect, not a problem for her. We had return flights from Syd to Bris which was all good and flights from Syd to Bris to Hamilton Island which again was all good. DD simply had a bottle as we took off, loved the baby sized TV on the back of the chairs so that entertained her along with the relatives we flew with and on descent I simply gave her the dummy to suck and she had NO problems at all. I had a thermos of boiling water which I used to make up her bottles which was nice a quick. She had a nap on each flight just laying on my lap and it was all good. On one flight the passenger next to us said to us "i'm very impressed by her."..
Our return flight from Hamilton Island to Sydney via Brisbane was another story completely!! Rather than give you the details and potentially scaring you I want to just say that we didn't get any bad looks or anything like that and DD was screaming due to pain in her ears (and had a sobbing mummy holding onto her). SO the point is not to alarm you because this was 1 incident where DD was sick and we'd been told we could fly with her, BUT I just wanted to highlight the fact we didn't get any "bad" looks aimed at us or anything. I'd have no problem taking DD on a plane again (we have trips to QLD and NZ coming up later in the year). If you do get any looks I'd simply ignore them and even take a little joy out of it to be honest. I did alot of travel for work before DD arrived and had many children sit near me and yes some business people might give you looks but just take some enjoyment from it because chances are they probably don't have kids so they probably have the exact situation to look forward to. (I said to my mum as I boarded - "watch for the looks - I'm going to laugh"). You will probably find that you'll be so focused on making sure your DS is all fine and happy that you won't even pay any attention to what other passengers are doing.
I highly recommend the aisle seats if you can and have everything easily reachable in your bag. There isn't a great deal to move when you have bubba on your lap and are trying to do things.
You will probably find a thread which I started earlier this year about the exact same thing and some ladies gave some great ideas. I took DD in my Easy On baby carrier (bare in mind some airports will make you take bubba out of the harness completely and put the harness through the xray machine, so be prepared with nothing in your hands but your bag so you can easily grab bubba out).
Also another little tip is if bubba has a favourite toy which is about hand-sized, get a spare dummy chain and attach the toy to the chain, that way bubba can play as he likes while sitting on your lap, but if he drops it then it won't go far and you won't be hunting around for toys under seats later on.
Tips for flying with 9 month old...
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(I said to my mum as I boarded - "watch for the looks - I'm going to laugh"). You will probably find that you'll be so focused on making sure your DS is all fine and happy that you won't even pay any attention to what other passengers are doing.
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