Social story for flying: prepare your child for an airplane trip, page by page

If you've been told to make a social story before your child's flight, here's the short version: a social story for flying is an ordered, illustrated walkthrough of the whole airplane day — wake-up to new bed — written in calm, present-tense sentences and read out loud in the days before. The child meets every step of the day on paper first, so the real airport stops being a string of surprises and becomes a script they already know.

This post is the flight-specific version: the exact sequence to cover, example sentences you can copy, and the three moments parents reliably forget. If you want the general concept — why social stories work, the format, the template — that's in our guide to social stories for travel.

The airplane day, in the order your story should tell it

The single rule of a social story is one step per page, in the true order. For a flight, the sequence is:

1. Waking up on travel day (often early, sometimes dark)
2. The journey to the airport — name the mode: car, taxi, train
3. Arriving: the airport is a very big building full of people
4. Check-in: the suitcase goes away on a belt, on purpose, and we see it again later
5. Security: shoes off, bag in the tray, walking through the arch
6. The wait at the gate — the wait is a real step; give it its own page
7. Boarding: the tunnel, the airplane door, finding the seat, the seatbelt
8. Takeoff: the speed, the push into the seat, the tilt, the ears
9. The flight: the seatbelt sign, the snack, the tiny loud toilet
10. Landing: the going-down feeling, the ears again, the little bump
11. Arriving: the new place, the new room, the new bed

Eleven pages, one sentence each. That's the whole document.

Example sentences, page by page

Write from the child's point of view, present tense, plain words. Name the thing, normalise the sensation, move on. Some lines you're welcome to steal:

• Check-in: "We give the man our big suitcase. It rides away on a long belt. It will meet us at the other end."
• Security: "My shoes go in a tray. The tray slides through a special window. I walk through a doorway that checks everyone."
• The gate: "We sit by the big windows and wait for our plane. Waiting is part of flying. I can color while we wait."
• Takeoff: "The plane goes fast, then the ground gets smaller. My tummy feels funny for a second. Then we are flying."
• The toilet: "The plane toilet makes a big WHOOSH when it flushes. It is loud, but it is quick, and it is meant to do that."
• Landing: "The plane goes down slowly. My ears feel full. I chew my snack and they pop. Then — a little bump. We have landed."

Notice what these never do: they never say "don't be scared," and they never hide the strange parts. "You might feel scared at takeoff" plants the fear; "my tummy feels funny for a second" names the sensation and files it under normal.

The three moments parents forget

Across every flight story we've made, the same three steps get left out, and they're the three that bite:

1. The toilet flush. The vacuum WHOOSH is the most startling sound on the plane, and many small children will refuse the toilet for the rest of the flight after meeting it unwarned. One page fixes it.
2. The wait. Children rehearse the exciting parts and then hit forty minutes of nothing at the gate. Put the wait in the story as its own step, with what they'll do during it.
3. The ears on descent. Takeoff gets all the attention, but descent is when the ears actually hurt. A page that says chew, drink, yawn turns it into a job they know how to do.

Warnings beat surprises. That's most of what a social story is.

If your child is autistic

Social stories come from autism practice, and for autistic and ASD kids this isn't a nice-to-have — it's the core intervention, and it pairs with sensory planning: pre-warning the PA system, the engine pitch change, the smell of the cabin; packing ear defenders; choosing early or late boarding deliberately. Our guide to flying with an autistic child covers that whole layer, including what to ask the airline for.

Read it nightly, then take it through the airport

A social story works through repetition: read it at bedtime every night for the week before, until they're saying the lines with you. Memorising it is the point.

Then bring it on the plane — cabin bag, not suitcase. The most powerful moment for a social story for flying isn't on the sofa at home; it's pointing at the security page while standing in the security line. The book stops being a story and becomes a checklist the child is ticking off in real time. One parent described it best:

"She brought it on the plane and pointed at the security page when we got to security. She wasn't scared, she was checking."

Making yours tonight

The homemade version: three sheets of paper folded and stapled, one step per page, one calm sentence, a quick drawing to color. Stick figures are fine — the order does the work, not the art. (If a first flight is also a first trip, the first flight with a toddler guide covers everything around the story: the packing, the airport day, the ears.)

If you'd rather skip the drawing, WanderCrayon generates the whole thing as a printable coloring book: the eleven steps of your actual flight, a character that looks like your child, your real destination, one calm sentence per page. It takes about three minutes, and the coloring turns each page into rehearsal they do instead of rehearsal they hear.

Either way, the recipe is the same: the day in order, the strange parts named, read until familiar, brought along on the day. Have a good flight.