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How I made a mistake over the British Airways rules for unaccompanied children

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What are the British Airways rules for unaccompanied children flying with the airline?

We haven’t written about this topic since 2018. This is the excuse I am using for having almost come a cropper last month. (My other excuse is that I didn’t write that 2018 article!).

Let’s run over the British Airways rules for unaccompanied children.

British Airways minimum age for child flying alone

Back in 2018, BA raised the minimum age for a child travelling alone from 12 to 14.

The ‘Skyflyer’ service which allocated chaperones to unaccompanied minors was scrapped by British Airways in 2016 as a cost cutting measure.

The problem was that children aged 12+, who were still allowed to travel on their own, were struggling to cope without any adult oversight. The 2018 change raised the minimum age to 14 and this seems to have worked OK.

Where I went wrong ….

My 15-year old daughter attended a summer camp in Europe last month.

I had assumed that there wouldn’t be any problems. Aside from the fact that 15-year olds these days are more mature than I was at 18, my daughter flies 5+ times per year with British Airways and is a British Airways Executive Club Silver card holder. She knows Terminal 5 back to front.

What I didn’t know is that any child aged 14 or 15 and travelling alone MUST bring a completed parent / guardian consent form and a copy of the parental passport with them to the airport.

At no point in the ticket booking process was this mentioned, I’m sure.

ba.com says (emphasis mine):

If you’d like to book a flight for a child under the age of 16 who will be travelling alone, please get in touch via our Contact Us page as you can’t do this online.

This is not true. I had no problem booking for my daughter at ba.com, and as her BAEC number was in the booking British Airways knew exactly how old she was.

British Airways rules for unaccompanied children

I know for a fact that the need for paperwork was not mentioned during online check-in. OLCI didn’t actually work but ba.com did not explain why – I assumed that, because she was travelling alone, BA staff simply wanted to see her in person at a check-in desk.

(I am not passing the buck here. I accept it is my responsbility to know the rules. I just wouldn’t mind being pointed in the right direction to find the rules!)

Luckily, because my daughter was flying at 8.30am, my wife offered to take her to Heathrow alone and leave me in bed. This meant I was able to help when I got a call from Terminal 5 at 6.30am.

My wife had to complete the consent form and provide a paper copy of her passport photo page. This is key – the original passport is not acceptable (not that my wife had it) and a picture shown on a mobile device is not acceptable. It must be on paper so that the child can carry it with them.

Luckily – and full credit to the Terminal 5 check-in staff here – once I had sent a photo of my wife’s passport to her mobile phone, a T5 check-in supervisor was able to print it off after it was forwarded to a certain email address. My daughter made it through check-in with time to spare.

Let this be a lesson if you are planning to let your 14- or 15-year old children fly on their own in the near future!

Full details of the rules are on this page of ba.com.

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Comments (111)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Polly says:
    14 Aug14 August 07:17

    And to think my 2 kids went to Dublin unaccompanied from aged 6 on BMI/ EI. Whole bunches of them waiting in the pen in LHR, all going like ducks in a row with a staff member. They always enjoyed it. Amazing we trusted their system so easily. And it worked so well. My parents ID checked before handing them over. Kids were asked who is this person? And now Rob has this happen. Better safe than sorry tho.

  • Mark says:
    14 Aug14 August 07:19

    We had a similar close call when flying to Canada a couple of years ago and we had called ourselves ‘British subjects’ not ‘British citizens’ on the electronic entry form. Couldn’t do online check in and phoned up to check why, and was told just to go to the desk at T5 and check in there. Got there and was only told then that we would need to do a whole new visa on the spot to be able to fly. Cue me using one of the T5 check in computers to redo the form, which thankfully was approved instantly and we were able to fly. Nothing online about the issue, and even the BA call centre didn’t tell us!

    • Dev says:
      14 Aug14 August 07:46

      Fun fact – British Subjects (predominantly born in the Republic of Ireland before 1947) are not eligible for an U.S. ESTA. Their choices are: 1) get a visa, 2) naturalise as a British Citizen or 3) get an Irish passport.

      • John says:
        14 Aug14 August 08:56

        I thought many were women who married Irish men and thus not directly able to naturalise or get Irish passports without some extra hoops (such as living in Ireland for a certain length of time)

      • Martin says:
        16 Aug16 August 06:53

        My aunt discovered this when she arrived at the US border and said she was speaking at a conference – and was turned away. She subsequently applied for an Irish passport as becoming a British citizen would have meant doing the Life in the UK test, and she thought it was a bit of an insult after having lived here for 60+ years.

  • Paul says:
    14 Aug14 August 07:42

    My wife and I have PDFs of all family passports and driving licences on our mobiles, or more accurately the cloud. As much for my safety than and need for YP travel.
    And to think BA once had aunties who accompanied hordes of UMs on flights at start and end of school holidays. All the main routes to and from the Far East had this service.

    • Mikeact says:
      14 Aug14 August 08:42

      We also carry tIf i lose my ph8he lot…Dropbox in my case…insurance copies…EHIC…Credit/Bank card details, the list goes on…..If I lose my phone, easy enough to buy a cheap one, or use the wife’s….and I know the main secure login details with a different app, just in case.

    • Jill Kinkell says:
      14 Aug14 August 09:24

      Yep…that was me amongst the hordes travelling east to/from boarding school. Wouldn’t happen now, but then got to wear a stewardess’s hat and take round the basket of sweets prior to take off! ( in the days when as a 10 yr old I wanted to be an air stewardess….never occurred to me to be the pilot!)

  • Jeffrey says:
    14 Aug14 August 07:44

    If the T5 staff can print it out, they must have been able to see the image on your wife’s mobile? Why couldn’t they accept the same image on your daughter’s mobile ( assuming she has one of course)? She could carry that with her at all times. Sounds like bureaucracy. They clearly didn’t want a mobile image.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
      14 Aug14 August 13:00

      There may be some BA rule of government regulation that requires a printed copy.

      Until that requirement is changed then staff will comply with whatever is required under the current rules.

      I used to work for a regulator and some of the regulations we were applying were quite old and needed updating. Issue was our sponsor department didn’t see the need to waste their time and legal teams resources drafting a new statutory instrument. What they did allow was for us to change the guidance but not the underlying regulation.

  • Gordon says:
    14 Aug14 August 07:49

    I have always done the same for my firearms licence (Photograph and hard copy) incase the original is lost or misplaced, especially when traveling abroad for competitions.

    As this would go some way to appease the airport police before their checks are made to confirm you are the registered keeper.

    But obviously dealing with the inevitable fall out after!

  • Yona says:
    14 Aug14 August 07:50

    What I find scary about unaccompanied minors is when once boarded the crew seats them near me on the emergency exit row.

    Don’t know you but I don’t think a 14 yr old can be put in charge of opening the emergency door if anything happened. Let alone be able to reply yes or no to the stewardess when they ask you if you are ok with possibly doing that.

    • Tracey says:
      14 Aug14 August 08:08

      That also applies to some adults. I’ve also seen people allowed to sit in the emergency exit rows who would block the emergency doors rather than fit through them!

    • The Original David says:
      14 Aug14 August 08:20

      Obviously depends in the individuals in question, but I think I’d trust a frequent-flying 14-yr old above a 25-yr old TikTok-er with Airpods and fake eye-lashes, who would probably be more concerned about chipping their nail varnish than opening the emergency exit.

    • Rob says:
      14 Aug14 August 08:34

      Have you met a 14 year old recently? My 12 year old son is 5 10 and my daughter is 5 11. They can get that door open more easily than I can, I promise you.

      • Harry T says:
        14 Aug14 August 17:15

        Yeah, I would rather have a teenager in the edit row than many of the obese relics I’ve often seen there! I wouldn’t trust many adults these days to hoist a 20kg door.

  • mol27 says:
    14 Aug14 August 08:07

    We did this recently with my 14yo heading to France to stay with friends. Our experience was that I could not book online for one child (I could probably have booked him as an adult), so had to call to book. The agent did mention the form. They said OLCI would not work, but in fact it did – both ways.

    At the airport at LCY despite being HBO they insisted he go to a check in desk where they then took a photocopy of his form, wrote on the boarding pass that everything has been checked, and they also confirmed with me that he was being met at the other end.

    I think coming back from France it was all rather more relaxed. Might help that despite being 14 he is over 6’ tall and looks older.

  • Sideshowbob says:
    14 Aug14 August 08:13

    When I was cabin crew for Brymon, the skyflyers scheme meant I had kids on board as young as 6. You had to complete paperwork in a booklet they had with them.

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