This is a significant thread drift
but the tactic for men here is to make oneself somehow "useful" to the ex, so she has an incentive to co-operate on contact matters.
Being a single mother is damned hard work - even when the ex is paying loads of maintenance. Not too bad if you are an "earth mother" type who never wanted to go out to work anyway (those types make the hardest divorces) but much harder for a woman with intelligence and initiative who wants to get out and about and do something constructive.
Most divorced women with kids are bitter and spiteful, not least because they perceive themselves as having got a raw deal, while their ex husband can fly around in planes, and hit the internet dating sites. The fact that he also has to go to work is irrelevant... "men live for their job after all".
If you can have the kids over quite a lot, then she has time to go out and have a life, it won't cost her anything, and she doesn't have to trust some dim 18 year old babysitter who doesn't care about the kids and just wants to go clubbing and get her ankles behind her ears. In return, she won't be anywhere near such a bitch. Well, she might still be a bitch
but self interest will always win in the end.
How to structure all this.... tricky! One needs to live in reasonable proximity, for a start.
Maybe somebody will write it all up on some website... a step by step guide to getting divorced without driving oneself around the bend.
All the applicant needs to do is convince the court that they are genuinely in fear of flying and will suffer extreme anxiety if the children flew in a small plane.
Would that not be difficult if the child actually wants to fly, and has flown previously?
I am assuming the father has actually got a lawyer, a real
male lawyer, not some modern left wing liberal wimp from a company which is a member of that trade association called the SFLA
Example: my ex mandated a co-pilot. Then, what does she do? She takes them to the USA, and they go up for a heli trip around the Grand Canyon. A 2-pilot helicopter? Yeah, right, and I am the Pope. An aircraft with about 5,235 single points of failure, any of which is a certain death. Then, to top it all, she instructs the boys to not tell me
And I still didn't push it after that - because the 12 year old was too scared of her; she is his mum after all, feeds him and clothes him. It was not for another year that that she relented.