How Old Should Your Child Be When You Let Him or Her Travel Alone?

Some airlines let children travel as unaccompanied minors as young as five years old.  Would you let your child travel alone at that age?  Supposedly it is safe, as the parents can walk them out to the gate.  But there are pitfalls.  Do all parents wait until the plane actually takes off?  Or do they head for their car when the plane pushes back from the gate?  I dropped my elderly mom off once and left when the plane pushed back, and the plane developed a mechanical problem on while taxiing to the runway and returned to the gate for 3 hours.  Poor Mom, who did not have a cellphone, nor could she hear on one if she did, had no way to contact us.  My poor brother called me frantically when her plane failed to land, and we had quite a time trying to find her.  Imagine how you would feel if this was your 5 year old.  Mom said she happily read magazines on the flight for the 3 hours it took to get the plane fixed, and of course we eventually found her, but a 5 year old might be frightened.

Often children travelling alone do so at Christmas.  Fog, snow, and ice can delay if not outright cancel flights.  Havoc!  My husband, an airline pilot, has stories of unaccompanied minors stuck in strange cities when their connecting flight failed to appear, delayed or cancelled in some other city.  In this case, what happens to the child?  Does he or she simply camp in the airport?  My husband said that in the old days, kindly flight attendants took the kids home, but I’m not sure that such a thing happens anymore.

Every time we took our children to the airport, we talked them through the whole procedure. “What do we do with our bags?”  The older one could read and spot the Check Bags sign.  We looked at the boarding pass together and learned what they said, especially where the gate was listed and what seat we had.  The younger one was told she had to find the gate (with us trailing close behind), for she knew her ABC’s and could find gate D-9.  “Look up, read the signs,” was our mantra.  On board, they had to find and remember their seat number.  We frequently had to sit in separate rows, so the kids had plenty of books and games.

One time our youngest had to sit by herself and she was not at all cowed by this, even though she was only 5 or 6 years old.  She asked the young man sitting next to her if he wanted to play Go Fish.  He told her no.  Undeterred, she pulled out a bag of caramels and said, “I’ve got caramels.  We could bet!”  I don’t know where she learned that!  The young man was swayed, and they played for nearly the whole two hour flight.  I asked her upon landing if he took any of the caramels and she said “Of course, Mom, that’s how you do it.”  Years later, leaving from a southern California airport, a young man hopped up and down and said to his girlfriend, “I KNOW THAT GIRL! She and I played Go Fish for caramels.” Sure enough, same young man and he recognized my daughter even though she was much older.

What are your traveling tales?  How old should children be when travelling alone?