In this litigious society, American Airlines should end its unaccompanied minor program. It is not worth the hassle.
Mother Claims American Airlines Placed Her Unaccompanied Minor Boys In “Jail” And Deprived Them Of Food And Water After Flight Cancellation
The latest lawsuit comes from a mother of two in Florida, who claims that American Airlines kept her children, aged 10 and 12, in a “cold, jail-cell-like room overnight without food, water, blankets, or pillows.”
AA’s unaccompanied minor program costs $150 each way per child, with additional siblings included at no extra cost. The service includes:
- Early boarding to allow extra time to get settled and meet the flight attendants
- Kids-only lounges in our hub cities for flight connections
- Complimentary Kids’ Kits from Quaker with snacks and activities (for ages 5 – 10, in hub cities)
- An airport escort to help your child to the gate for flight connections
- Escorting the child to the authorized adult picking them up when they land
That’s a lot of benefits for $150 and when things go sideways, it creates a lot of drama, especially when connecting itineraries are involved.
In this case, the boys’ flight to Syracuse (SYR) was canceled and they remained stuck at Charlotte (CLT), their connecting city, overnight. They were rebooked the next day…at 5:00 pm…and their mother was told the boys would be placed in a “nice room for unaccompanied minors where there were beds and their own bathroom.”
But apparently they received no food or drinks that night (“not even a pretzel or snacks” according to one of the boys) and only received something to eat after complaining the next morning.
As for sleeping, the lawsuit contends, “The room was freezing, and the children spent the night on a sofa with the lights on. Apparently, the children had been placed in a lost children’s room.”
Here’s A Thought: Travel With Your Kids Or Prepare Them To Deal With Flight Delays + Cancellations
First, American Airlines should keep its promise and deliver what it promises. Second, leaving kids in a cold room with the lights on overnight and no blankets or pillows is not ideal.
If AA offers a service, it should do it right.
But maybe you don’t send your kids on a connecting itinerary alone if they cannot handle it? And why did they not have cell phones? And money for food? If you can afford to send your kids on a plane trip, you better have a way to communicate with them and a plan to feed them. Flight delays and cancellations are far too common to just leave it to chance, even under the guardianship of the airline.
I hope to send my children off on their own as early as possible…but they will be prepared and I will not do so until they have shown they can cope with travel plans going wrong.
Children of privilege? Not in a nation in which 97% of adults have mobile phones. A mobile phone or debit card is not a luxury item: it is a travel necessity.
So I actually place more blame on the parents here than I do on American Airlines, though I am not speaking from a legal perspective.
Time To End Accompanied Minor Program At American Airlines
These days, some parents will get in your face for even talking to their kid. It’s a different world and with changing times should come a re-evaluation of services long offered from a different era.
I would end the accompanied minor program if I were running American Airlines. Will it result in some lost revenue? Probably, but it would also eliminate a great source of liability.
At the very least, I would triple or quadruple the price of the program and only allow it for nonstop itineraries, thereby incentivizing parents to travel with their children and collecting a fee such that the kids could be better taken care of in case of flight delays or cancellations
CONCLUSION
American Airlines is facing a lawsuit from a mother who says that the airline failed to care for her children after a flight cancellation. Without commenting on the merits of this specific lawsuit, I really do not understand why American Airlines continues its unaccompanied minor program in its current form: it is too cheap, too generous, and too ripe for lawsuits.
Never used this type of service and never will. My kids traveled with me or my wife until they were old enough to travel by themselves which I think was age of 14. During the hundreds of trips they had with us, they learned how travel works and all the things that can go wrong and how to act when those things go wrong. They both have iDs, credit cards, cash, a smartphone and a charger. That’s the survival kit one needs when traveling alone.
So, there are no direct flights between Florida and SYR? Sorry to blame the victim here, but there are ways to decrease the odds of trouble in a case like this. And, we’re talking about your kids. This, in no way, excuses AA’s apparent incompetence here. But, that said, it wouldn’t have happened if mom there had used a couple of brain cells when it came to planning a trip for her kids (alone).
There are nonstops from SYR to Florida but they are almost all on ULCCs, which don’t allow unaccompanied minors. Southwest is the only airline that flies to Florida does, but they have a very small operation there and only fly to Orlando and Tampa.
I have few words for you all, “THAT’S SO AMERICAN AIRLINES” –
An easy compromise would be to drop the UM program but only for connecting itineraries and limit the chance for complications by restricting it to domestic non-stops. It sounds like most of the issues are for problems with missed connections or long delays where the probability compounds if you have more than a single flight segment.
I see the issue as the mother booked the flight connecting through CLT.
We have a friend whose child was sexually assaulted in DFW in the hands of AA. Thank god for the cameras to prove it.
When I was 5, I flew on American but a relative flew with me just for the trip then flew back.
When I was 9, I flew alone on Northwest and the connecting flight was cancelled. They gave me a hotel voucher, printed instructions, asked if I could read the instructions, which included shuttle information. They left me to fend for myself for hotel check-in. The hotel let me check in! I was never accompanied by an airline employee to the hotel!
What year was that?
I don’t like sending my 18 year old college student on connecting itineraries, and he has lounge access, a high limit credit card, and the Uber app.
People who take these wild risks with much smaller kids are NUTS. I agree, shut it down. I’m surprised AA risk management didn’t do so long ago.
I think I flew alone to Alabama to visit my aunt one summer when I was in the 5th/6th grade (would have been 1989/90.) I also flew alone to a couple of soccer camps, back in my early teen years. Obviously a lot different time. I didn’t have much money on me, but I knew how to call collect from a payphone in an emergency. One time, the camp forgot to pick me up from the airport. I had to call back home, then my mom somehow got in touch with the camp and they eventually came to pick me up. Was crazy to think what we used to do back then.
As a user and a past traveler under the program it works very well but should only be allowed on non-stop, point-to-point travel. Connections are tricky enough for anyone much less a child traveling alone, notwithstanding any policy or goodwill from the airline. Parents are assuming a risk and making a choice to have their child/children fly unaccompanied. When in doubt, go with the child to the final destination or make alternative arrangements to having a minor have to connect, especially through a major hub.
Is there anything in the program rules that tell what exactly happens in case of cancellation and need to overnight in a different location? Yes, these kids were 10 and 12yo but how about if it was a younger kid? The AA program allows kids a young as 5yo to use this service. What would they do if it was a 5yo traveling alone? Would they lock that kid in a room alone? That’s nuts! I know there is a lot that goes into this but someone from AA would have to stay with the kid if there was a need to overnight in a hotel or something. I once saw 3 kids arriving unaccompanied on a Delta flight. There was a teenager and two younger siblings. They were by the arrival gate and for some reason the parents were late to pick them up. The agent stayed with the kids all the time and never allowed them to stay alone. I saw the teen calling the parents a few times but the agent was there chatting and entertaining the younger kids. That is the minimum I would expect.
I can’t remember the details of why I looked into this, but perhaps a year ago, I looked into these programs on a number of airlines. They all made it clear that if you’re doing a connection, and the connection falls apart, that this could turn into a big problem. Even if the kid is older, say 15, and there is an onsite airport hotel with vacancy, the hotel may not rent a room to an unaccompanied minor. It can get messy, best to avoid.
They should either shut it down completely or raise the prices because it actually is a huge liability.
This one time… picture it, TWA, LAX 1988… connecting flight from Cleveland to Honolulu .. I was 7 and my little sister was 4. The crew straight up left the plane and never took us to be transferred to our next flight.. I navigated LAX from terminal 1 to terminal 7 by myself with my 4 year old sister….. this was 1988 by the way, if you remember what LAX was like back then … the connecting flight crew were ASTONISHED we were at they gate… b/c basically we were missing children at that moment. Lol. But I’m thankful for the experience b/c they put us in first class to say sorry , and I’ve never looked BACK since then. I mean, Ice cream sundaes and all the coloring books you wanted, and sitting in the cockpit during flight on a plane at ages 7 & 4, you don’t forget that stuff when your family was extremely poor at the time.. long love unaccompanied minor flights (prior to 1993 LOL)
When I was 13, I flew from Florida to the UK and back with a stopover for fuel in Bermuda. But, the world was a very different place back then. That, any maybe my parents just didn’t like me all that much… anyways…
Kids these days are different. I learned about a year ago that one of my kids, who was about 11 at the time, didn’t know how to conduct a cash transaction. We pay for everything on cards these days, and sure she played with the toy grocery checkout thing in the house for years, but doing it in real life with an unknown cashier is different. Kids lives today are different than our lives were.
Sending young kids on a connecting flight through Charlotte with no cell phone, and no emergency plan, is indicative of a parental problem. American dropped the ball for sure, but here’s the thing about air travel– all of the airlines drop the ball at some point. Part of traveling is knowing that you can’t just turn off your brain and expect the airlines to make everything okay.
Years ago AC stopped accepting UMs on connecting flights.
If the price is too high, the liability shifts to the parents when they fly with the child instead of there being an UM
Your solution of vastly jacking up the price would make it so that only the wealthy could afford to send their children solo on flights. While the rich would doubtless see no problem with that, a divorced parent sending their child to the other parent would likely not be in such a favorable situation.
Why would an airline have the responsibility to transport kids cheaply because of a divorce agreement? If its too expensive to fly the kid because the airline has raised the price to offset their duty of care for a kid, then either ap parent flies with them, or if they cannot afford it they drive.
How is $600 for one kid one way cheaply? Many divorced parents – especially single moms – don’t have the time off to drive a kid a thousand miles plus and then the same on the return and don’t have several hundred dollars cash on top of the price of a ticket. I’m pointing out that Matthew’s suggestions work great for him but I for one have neither the net worth nor the income he does. That makes it a “Let Them Eat Cake” proposal because it’s not a problem for him.
You have no idea as to the circumstances which led to these kids’ booking including how much time they had to plan or where the funds to pay for the trip came from or what communications gadgets they did or didn’t possess. (And it’s alsos none of our business).
A cell phone is just a flaky gadget which depends on frequently charging a battery (which depends on availability of a power source) and also paying to subscribe to a network that happens to be functioning properly exactly when and where you try to use it.
The burgeoning expectation by corporate America that anyone who matters is responsible for having such a device functioning at their hip 24 x 7… and anyone else — including those who prepaid for service which is not functioning — is lesser-than-human and unemployable and unworthy of expecting what used to be standard customer care…. is not suprising but also insidious and callous and drivn by greed and profit.
Helicopter parenting is out of control in this country. Parents are so hands on that kids are blissfully and critically unprepared for the real world. And then when something unsurprisingly goes wrong because their kids weren’t prepared, for the parents it’s everyone’s fault but their own, and don’t even blink before suing.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, toddlers take the subway to school by themselves everyday without any issue. They are fully prepared and are taught exactly what to do by their parents. Now I know that’s partially the case because Japanese society is much safer than America, but still… makes you think!
Kurt, you comment is the best one for me to respond to. I recall a controversy when Matt was, I think, proposing that parents should decide whether to have an lap-infant ticket and for the FA union to not deny that choice to parents who wish it. (I think). In this case, I think he’s doing a “let them eat cake” argument, although… I can see his point about the liability.
As an Eastern European and Gen Xer, I don’t have a problem with kids being subjected to some harshness in life. I walked uphill, both ways in the snow to school and I’m better for it and I LIKED it! Not all parents are into “independent” children at a young age, but that should be their option. If AA can clean up some issues in the program raised, it should be an option to the parents provided the children get the care promised. Win-win.
Yes, there are liability issues but sadly that can be used as an excuse to deny us ALL kinds of great things such as, say, no more hot tea or coffee service lest someone sue you over their tattoo getting burned. Will alcohol no longer be served on flights? Just because “children” are involved, do we need to bubble wrap them?
I’m chuckling about the lights left on. Yeah, that’s annoying but then, what about “safety” and “liability?” Regarding the snacks, yeah, that’s wrong (whether a child or an adult, really) but they’ll survive.
My wife griped “How come whenever you and our daughter come back from the playground, she’s got a bruise?” but yet, she eventually no longer got hurt at all but had learned how to manage herself quickly while my wife’s helicopter parenting left her ragged for years following her around the playground.
Let’s go with “Let’s make this service BETTER and MORE accessible to those who need it” instead of “Let’s make it MORE expensive so only elites should afford it if they want to or just deny it altogether”.
Just to be clear, I am the total opposite of a helicopter parent. I may look at things through a legal liability lense but my neighbor recently yelled at me for my letting my son walk around the block alone. My goodness, he was six years old. What foolishness.
Sadly given today’s environment no one under 16 should fly alone unless it is a non-stop flight. Too many risks regardless of what an airline promises to do. They should also allow the parent or guardian to be with them at the departure gate, and a parent or guardian to be at the arrival gate.
AA shouldn’t offer anything. They should cease to operate because they’re fucking trash.
I have used both American Airlines and Delta’s unaccompanied minor program for my son about 10 times in the last three years. He goes to a boarding school of state. All with connecting flights. We’ve never had a problem and when there has been delays are connection issues the Airlines immediately notified you were text messages or emails not to saying we’ll never have a problem, but so far it’s been really good for us. And my son really enjoys the responsibility and freedom.
Glad it has worked for you! I’d love to send my son when he gets a little older without having to use a UMP.
You should be responsible for your children if you are going to travel with them…
Way back in the dark ages, AKA the 1960s, my brother and I did the summer shuffle between divorced parents. My dad flew from Arkansas to Minnesota to pick us up and my mom drove the reverse to bring us back. Neither of them would have trusted the airline’s to get us there. Of course, before deregulation, it was three segments on three different airlines, but the premise is the same. If your child isn’t experienced enough to handle what might go wrong, you shouldn’t send them alone.
I think we are being a bit too judgmental of the parents here as we don’t know their circumstances. If we are talking about divorced parents, there is often a legal obligation that one parent or another has custody at specific times of the year regardless of where they live. Not everyone has the ability to take time off to travel with their kids or drive them to their ex-spouse’s location or the funds to do that as often as the divorce settlement requires. Furthermore, not every market has nonstop flights to many destinations beyond the major hubs. I travel often to SYR to visit family and almost all nonstops to Florida are on ULCCs, which typically don’t allow UMs.
I’m sure most parents don’t want to have their children fly as UMs, but sometimes there aren’t any feasible alternatives and it’s the only way for the children to get where they need to be. American is totally in the wrong here as they offered a service that the customers paid for and failed to deliver on what they offered. Maybe there should be more restrictions on the flights this service is available on (say not making it available on routings where the kids are connecting to a destination on the last flight of the day). They could also flag flights that have UMs aboard for flight ops so if there is a choice between cancelling that flight or one without they cancel the one without. They could even be stricter about letting UMs board a flight if there’s a risk of a connecting flight getting cancelled (typically the UMs have a parent or guardian with them through security and up til boarding at their departure airport. Either way, at the end of the day, American chose to offer this service on that particular flight routing. It’s astonishing that they don’t have a contingency plan for this type of event at one of their largest hubs.