Wouldn’t surprise me.
I saw a 12ish year old girl be seated next to a drunk guy as an UM on a Delta flight. The female FA asked the guy TWICE to leaver her alone and to not not touch her anymore. He was leaning into her and touching her arm while he was trying to talk to her. The FA finally moved her. You never know who is going to sit with your child. Thank goodness the FA was observant.
Kids can encounter weirdos at school or during sports but at least there is an expectation of certain level of standards. On a plane, you have no choice about who your child is exposed to.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/19/us/oregon-man-accused-of-groping-child-on-airline-flight/
You never know.
From the CNN article @BunsenBurner post#82 linked:
I let my daughter fly alone a few times, but I always accompanied her to the gate and waited until she got on the plane. I did this until she was 15, the age at which most airlines say they are no longer considered an unaccompanied minor.
This case is horrifying, but both children are okay.
At the age they’re still unaccompanied minors. It’s just that the airlines don’t force you to buy the service.
If you opt out of buying the service, and there’s a SNAFU, the 15 year old is own his/her own to cope with the problem just like all the adults on the flight. It could be a problematic if the airline puts stranded passengers up for the night in a hotel, but the hotel won’t admit minors alone.
Then things must have changed in the last 15 years when the youngest of those friends flew as unaccompanied minors and WERE ASSIGNED AN AIRLINE EMPLOYEE AS A CHAPERONE FROM THE CHECK-IN/GATE TILL THEY WERE MET BY/PICKED UP BY PARENTS/RELATIVES/TRUSTED ADULT FRIENDS.
And that included them being accompanied throughout the flight by the chaparone.
Things must have changed in the past 17+ years, because 17 years ago, when kiddo and her buddies flew to summer camp as unaccompanied minors, no one was assigned to chaperone them throughout the flight.
And that included them being accompanied throughout the flight by the chaparone.>>
An airline employee actually sat with them on the flight? Not IME.
Cobrat, I think you must have misinterpreted what your friends said. I’ve been flying since I was a child and not once have I seen a child with a private chaperone. Sometimes the flight attendant assigned to take the child to the person on the receiving end is (or at least at one time was) from the flight, but no one babysits the child on the flight. They tend to put kids where they can be loosely monitored by the FA’s. That often used to be at the back of the flight when FA’s were commonly stationed there but these days is more often in the front.
Can you imagine how cost-prohibitive it would be to pay the salary of a flight attendant assigned to just one child?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the TSA agent told the parents they couldn’t come in without a boarding pass of their own. Mistakes can be made by people in authority.
Unless you have personal experience putting a minor child on an airplane…anything you post is here say.
We sent our kid on a trip…alone…when she was 12 or 13. We looked at what the airline was going to do. It was basically make sure the kid was seated on the plane…and that was IT. No chaperone sitting next to the kid the whole trip. Nope. And that was 16 years ago.
We decided that the $100 (which was the price at the time) wasn’t buying us anything. We were able to accompany the kid to the gate…and watch her go down the jetway. She had an assigned seat near the front of the plane (which we chose when we booked).
We didn’t let our children fly solo until they were 13. I understand that airline agreed to take care of them so they are responsible but so are parents for not considering all the things that can go wrong with a toddler flying alone. Flights get delayed, have accidents, get hijacked etc.
There’s no TSA in the Dominican Republic. That’s the departure country.
And in the U.S. you can get a document which allows you to accompany minor children all the way to the gate from your airline…and TSA allows this.
I wonder if this mixup could have occured on a domestic itinerary, since airlines make the parents escort child to the departure gate.
Seems to be a problem with Jet blue’s Dominican Republic procedures.
Airlines don’t MAKE parents escort their kids to,the gate. But they ALLOW them to. There is a difference.
I was on a flight to West Palm. Dorect flight from Boston to FL. The woman next to me got on in a fur coat, turtle neck, boots, etc. I wondered what I had missed about the weather forecast in FL! Well, guess what…this grown adult had somehow gotten on the wrong plane. She totally freaked out when the pilot started to talk about flying I very NYC. The flight attendants escorted her to first class.
When we landed, she apologized to me for getting hysterical. The airline contacted her family in Newark…where she was supposed to be…and flew her on the next flight out first class.
Mistakes happen.
And yea, I know the post here is about five year olds. But my point is…mistakes happen…even with adults.
Some airlines policies do indeed mandate the parent/adult accompany child to the departure gate and wait there until the plane is AIRBOURNE-- I’ve had to do it. But overseas, I had to release my kid to the airline at the check in counter, on the “street side” of immigration control.
The story about the lady in the fur coat probably got some employee in serious hot water for permitting her onboard an unauthorized flight.
@PrimeMeridian the fur coat lady story was LONG before TSA, and security. At that point in time, you just shoes your boarding pass and got on the plane. No scanning or anything. The fur coat lady had a boarding pass…and unfortunately for her…no one else was assigned to the same seat. That would have prevented her from actually getting seated on the flight.
I doubt it ever crossed her mind to sue the airline!
I got on the wrong flight once. It was at an airport that had 3 or 4 flights loading in the same area, and I think even 2 using the same jetway. Got on, found ‘my’ seat, and then someone else wanted it. Oops. I then had to retrieve my stuff and go the right plane.
I wasn’t the only one who did it.