Florida children take 600-mile flight to visit Dollywood theme park

Young travellers used $700 savings to pay for trip to Nashville
Florida children Dollywood
The entrance to the Dollywood theme park – at the other end of Tennessee from Nashville, where the three children landed. Photograph: Guardian

Getting past America's rigid airport security can frustrate even seasoned travellers. So a US airline is struggling to explain how three bored Florida children were allowed to take a 600-mile flight without their parents' permission in a spontaneous pilgrimage to a Dolly Parton theme park.

With little to do on a hot summer day, Bridget Brown, a 15-year-old from Jacksonville, co-opted her 11-year-old brother, Cody, and a 13-year-old friend, Bobby Nolan, into a trip to Nashville, Tennessee, using $700 (£450) of savings.

They took a cab to the airport and were able to buy tickets from a Southwest Airlines sales desk without any raised eyebrows from the cashier.

"He said OK and told us how much it would be and then we paid him," said Brown. "Then he put the flight things on our bags, and then he said 'You better run because you might miss your flight'."

At a security checkpoint, the children were not asked for any form of identification because, under a quirk of US airline policy, under-18s require only a boarding pass on domestic flights.

"We just took our stuff out of our pockets, took off our shoes and walked through," Nolan told NBC television.

Unfortunately, the trip ended in disappointment as the intrepid trio realised, on arriving in Nashville, that they were 200 miles from their intended destination, a park named Dollywood dedicated to America's queen of country music.

Suddenly scared at their predicament, the young travellers phoned their startled parents, who had no idea that their children had left Florida. "I never would have dreamed my kid would have got on an aeroplane without me or their mom," said Brown's father, James. "It was very scary." Southwest Airlines insisted it had done nothing wrong, as it permits unaccompanied minors to travel over the age of 12. The Transportation Security Administration said there was no security risk because the children had been "screened thoroughly".

But the jaunt prompted criticism of slack policies towards children. Richard Bloom, a security expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, said terrorist groups could take note of any loopholes: "In other parts of the world, young people are engaged in weapons, planting bombs, testing security."

Mark Orwoll, an aviation commentator at Travel and Leisure magazine, wrote on his blog: "Alarm bells should have been ringing like Notre Dame cathedral on Bastille Day."

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