Typically my family travels together so this has never arisen for us previously. But this summer I learned everything I needed to know about minors traveling as unaccompanied minors. I wanted to share in case it can help anyone else unfamiliar with this term and what it means in the travel context.
Here is the background. In the U.S., carriers will not let children travel alone until they are 15. This could vary airline by airline but this was the understanding I gathered from our experience.
In Europe children can travel alone at age 12. I don’t have an understanding of the ages that would apply in other areas beyond this.
So as you can see, there is a three year gap.
The way we discovered this issue was through my 14 year old daughter’s travel to an E F language program in Germany this summer. Note that she is one year under the U.S. requirement.
The program had recommended against using the unaccompanied minor status.
We reserved travel from Florida to Germany through Lufthansa. No problem.
However, on the way home, my daughter’s flight that was supposed to come directly back Germany to Florida was canceled at the last minute. She was rebooked by Lufthansa on a flight from Germany into North Carolina. From there she was to fly the last leg home on American. She made it back fine to the U.S. But while she was en route over the Atlantic, a lovely Lufthansa representative from North Carolina was helping me to try to head off the issue that had reared its head. Since American would not fly a child without unaccompanied minor status the last leg of the flight was in danger.
I contacted American but they said I needed to address it through Lufthansa, the airline that I had booked through. I called Lufthansa and they said I could not add the status because the flight was already in progress. Can you see the dilemma?
Well, in the end, I had to fly from Florida to North Carolina to collect my daughter. As you know, last minute flights can be extremely expensive. Lufthansa is supposed to reimburse but I haven’t seen it yet.
So, moral of the story, if you have a child under 15 you will most likely want to add the unaccompanied minor status when you book their travel.
Ahead of time you need to figure out who will be collecting them at the other end of their travel because the airline will need this person’s name. (This is why the language school does not recommend it because they are organizing a lot of students arriving and may not have the exact person assigned to pick up ahead of time.)
For departure, when you drop your unaccompanied minor at the airport you need to go through the security with them and wait at the gate until their plane is in the air (or some airlines require 10 minutes past takeoff).
And that is everything you need to know about flying unaccompanied minor status, or at least all I have learned so far….
Notes From Real Life 