Tag: UNACCOMPANIED MINOR

Is your child old enough to fly alone? You better be absolutely sure!

By Michelle Couch-Friedman |  | Updated December 24th, 2020

If you send your child on an international journey, you better make sure they’re old enough to fly alone — on all portions of the itinerary.

Tessa Hadlock was confident that her worldly 13-year-old child could fly alone to Spain and back. Unfortunately, she was only half right. On the way home from Barcelona, the airline denied her son boarding. It turns out the child wasn’t quite old enough to fly alone after all. (Reprint) Read more “Is your child old enough to fly alone? You better be absolutely sure!”

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Help! United left my 13-year-old daughter in Syracuse

By Christopher Elliott |

What does United Airlines’ unaccompanied minor fee cover? Katrina Cichosz wants to know, and after reviewing her case, I’m kind of curious, too.

Let’s go right to the textbook definition, which is on United’s website. When her 13-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, flew home for Thanksgiving on Nov. 21, she had the option of paying the $99 fee to cover “the extra handling required” for managing a child’s travel, but technically, she didn’t have to.
Read more “Help! United left my 13-year-old daughter in Syracuse”

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Whose responsibility are those unaccompanied minors?

By Christopher Elliott |

Christina Welsch is young, dresses conservatively, and is usually alone when she flies.
Read more “Whose responsibility are those unaccompanied minors?”

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Is this enough compensation? Sorry, your kids have the wrong ticket

By Christopher Elliott |

Like any good father, LeRoy Villanueva tried to cover all of his bases when he put his two children on a plane from Paris to Los Angeles recently. Most important to him was buying the required unaccompanied minor service, which would allow his kids to fly without an adult.

“I asked British Airways if I could buy the tickets at a third-party travel agency and pay the airline separately for the unaccompanied minor service,” he says. “A phone agent told me that I would have to purchase two adult fares from the online travel agency and then afterwards — at least 48 hours before departure — pay British Airways’ unaccompanied minor Service fee.”

He verified the information by phoning the airline a second time; again, it offered the same choices.

But the airline left out an important detail.
Read more “Is this enough compensation? Sorry, your kids have the wrong ticket”

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