Kids and flight travel-flying alone is something to think about

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So, you want to send your kid across the country. If you look at the airlines websites it is something that kids can do alone. There are unaccompanied minor charges that will assure that your child will be watched over and gotten from one flight to another-right?

The couple that sent their 10 year old child paid their fee and believed that the little girl would be met at the plane and then escorted to her other connecting flight. They paid for the service.

So, not only was she not met at the plane, she was not helped in any way by the flight attendants, and she was lost in the busy airport.

Allegedly the flight attendants told her:

They were busy and she had to wait (she asked repeatedly).

Here’s a great idea:

How about making a phone call? It is not the flight attendants job to ferry kids around, but maybe it is simply being a responsible adult to give the airlines a call so that at the very least someone knows there is a kid waiting alone for accompaniment that is already late. That should not take too much time.

According to United Airlines:

The service that meets minors and takes them to their next flight is a third party vendor. The fact that the child was not met at her flight was not their responsibility.

Other kids flying alone:

Delta sent kids to wrong cities in 2010, twice. The charges were reimbursed and the kids were sent where they needed to go for free.

This year, Southwest Airlines left a sleeping teen on his flight after it landed. So instead of getting off in Tulsa, he flew on to St. Louis.

It was United Airlines that lost the 10 year old just recently. What is scary about the situation is that no-one knew she missed her flight until the camp called to inform parents that she did not arrive. This left her missing for hours in the airport. She could not make a phone call to her parents (the flight attendants refused to help with that either). She did not have a cell phone herself, obviously, which would have turned this incident into another story entirely. Kids are smart enough to use cell phones at a very early age. Maybe if you are going to send your child across country alone, get them a phone for the flight. They can turn it off at takeoff and then back on after landing. Parents can keep track of what is happening that way and contact the airlines for help if need be.

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