kids left alone

The summer is GONE! Change in the airport is evident the moment you enter the road heading to the parking area and the terminal. No more traffic and loud horns, people zig-zagging between cars with their luggage. You can’t smell edginess in the air inside the terminal anymore. No long queues, overbooked flights and rude passengers. Notably, there aren’t that many children traveling alone anymore. Oh how I love the low season!

During the summer, it is not strange to have 8 children traveling unaccompanied in the same flight. We used to laugh at the flight dispatchers when they used to come and pick up the kids from the boarding gate to take them to the aircraft. If it wasn’t for their bright safety jackets you’d confuse them with summer camp guides than airport employees.

I have no problem with children traveling alone. I have a problem however with some parents. Yes, the airline company becomes responsible for the child but it does not in any case become a nursery or a play ground where you can drop your kid and leave.

We’ve had a 9 year old dropped off at the entrance of the terminal to fend for himself. Mind you, the kid knew what he was doing. He queued in the right counter and presented his passport and luggage to the check-in agent all by himself. It’s obvious he’s done it before. His parents couldn’t be found. Obviously, we couldn’t accept the child especially since he was taking an international flight!

Another incident we’ve had this summer was a 7 year old with an international connecting flight with a stop over of over six hours! What’s the child supposed to do for 6 hours alone? Yes, he’s in the care of the airline company but what are we supposed to do with him during all this time? Sit him on a chair in the office while we do our paperwork? Six hours! I don’t get it.

There’s more anecdotes of course there are! I can’t remember many of them. I spent the summer in a haze and I’m happy to have blocked most of it out of my memory. However, I do remember one family who got pretty angry at us for not accepting their child. The kid had a connecting flight which he was going to miss because of a delay. In these cases, we can’t accept unaccompanied minors because there are no guarantees they can be rerouted that same day onto a different flight if they miss their connecting flight. The parents didn’t get it. They said the kid could take the next flight the following morning if he loses his connecting flight. Now I don’t get that. How can you send your kid away with a 100% he’s missing his connecting flight and would have to sleep one night alone in another city? Really, it blows my mind. I didn’t accept the kid that day even though I may now have a pierced eardrum from all the yelling I got from his parents.

Here’s an interesting incident. Didn’t happen to us (thank god!). Some airline mishandled an unaccompanied minor situation where the kid left the aircraft by himself. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing but hey, I’m weird like that.