What is the British Airways policy for unaccompanied children?

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• Solitaire says:

  8 Mar8 March 08:23

  I used to fly regularly on my own from age 8 ’til 18 as my parents lived on Borneo, travelling to and from my abusive prison (aka British Boarding School in the 80s). The first few “commutes” I was put on BA – the “dragons”, as they were nicknamed (Senior Crew), seemed to loathe children (especially in First class – I was lucky)… I remember one stewardess smacking me and shouting at me for wriggling around the seat (as children do), and another force feeding me to eat some kippers, which I hated, and promptly threw up in the toilet.. I can still see her eyes glaring at me like a headmistress, fearful of the punishment if I didn’t eat them. The BA experience was so traumatic I begged my parents to put me on another airline – if being recalled back to prison was bad enough, suffering BA to get there made it even worse. My parents relented and put me on Singapore Airlines – and that was that – a life-long convert – the crew were so caring and warm, comforting a distressed and tearful young boy, torn from his mother for 3 months at a time, the SQ crew were (and are to this day) truly exceptional. The flight route initially went LHR-BRU-DXB-BOM-SIN and took 22 hours until the 747-300 (Big Tops) arrived and I loved every minute on board with the SQ crew, pampered and cared for. By the time I was 9 I was so au fait with the routine I used to refuse the “nanny” service and go it alone, often to the ground agents’ horror, scared they would lose me, as I would be wandering around airports on my own – no one batted an eyelid then. I even had to overnight in Singapore each way as there were no connections to Sarawak or Brunei, and again I would be off on my own, wandering the safe streets of Singapore at midnight, finding a hawker stall for some Nasi Lemak. It was such an adventure. I loved holding on to my paper airline tickets (I would never let the ground staff keep them!), handwritten coupons and little stickers on the boarding passes, taking most of the toilets of the amenities, helping the crew in the galley, such fun.. until reality dawned as we touched down in London and the school gates beckoned. No mobile phones or internet to update my parents of my progress, I guess my parents simply assumed they would see me descend the stairs of the SQ B727 or the “Royal Banana” on the flight they had booked me on.

  • Mayfair Mike says:

    8 Mar8 March 08:36

    Colourful and interesting anecdotes, thanks for sharing

  • RussellH says:

    8 Mar8 March 10:54

    My cousin was in a similar situation, regularly flying between Bogota and London from about 11 upwards.
    For myself, I never set foot on an aircraft until I was in my mid 20s, and was over 40 before I took a shorthaul flight within Europe.
    But I was travelling solo from one end of the Piccadilly Line to the other before I was 8 (though the guard was asked to keep an eye on me – in those days the guard’s control panels were in the rear car of the train and the guard took one of the passenger seats) and at 13 travelled alone by train and ferry from London to Limoges (though I was unexpectedly met at the Gare du Nord and escorted across Paris to the Gare d’Austerlitz).
    I found the LT guards friendly and supportive; one no doubt overstepped the mark by letting me close the train doors and even giving the right-away bell to the driver.
    At that age, of course, I would not have been aware that this must have been against all the rules, and having mentioned it all (very positively) to my parents, I imagine a very quiet word may have been passed down the line from my father, who also worked at LT.
    I was just disappointed that I was unable to open the train doors – this required pressing two well separated buttons at the same time, and the force required to press them was much greater than that for the other buttons.
    In some ways, happier times.

  • Mark says:

    8 Mar8 March 13:29

    Fantastic Story.

• Jill Kinkell says:

  8 Mar8 March 08:56

  Regularly travelled as an unaccompanied minor to/from Europe and the Far East to my lovely Scottish boarding School in the 60s. Cabin Crew used to let one of us ( there were always a few kids – army and diplomatic brats) wear a CC hat and walk round with a basket of sweeties before take off. Those days flying from Hong Kong was definitely not a 12 hr one leg trip. More like 8 stops and 24 hrs! The crew were always great , trips to cockpit to get our log books signed, and generally my recollections are very positive.

• CHRIS says:

  8 Mar8 March 09:00

  What happens on the return flight, presuming the parents aren’t there?

  • Rob says:

    8 Mar8 March 09:35

    It’s all approved on the outbound. However, it is a good question as to what happens if you have booked 2 x one-way flights ….

    • Roosit says:

      8 Mar8 March 11:50

      I’ve never used the BA consent form, but I have positive experience with the ADAC form as mentioned above. A copy of a parent’s passport is to accompany that too, so I’d expect BA would be fine with it as well. We have successfully used it on BA, although admittedly when the child was 15 it was with an accompanying adult, and by the time they returned on their own they were 16. Having said that, even in the latter case they were asked for the consent form at border control so it was good they had it anyway.

  • JDB says:

    8 Mar8 March 10:11

    You need another responsible adult with the appropriate authority/documentation.

• NorthernLass says:

  8 Mar8 March 10:03

  My son was on a separate booking to us when he was 16, LHR-BOS. On the return leg he couldn’t do OLCI so we went over to the BA desk the night before (we were staying at the Hilton BOS) to see what the problem was. Ground staff said they needed to check he was travelling with a responsible adult! It didn’t make a lot of sense given that he’d already flown the outbound with no issues.

• RussellH says:

  8 Mar8 March 10:32

  I find the insistance on the “child” having a mobile phone quite scary. Particularly given the recent developments in trying to restrict access to the things.
  Next they will insist on it being “smart”phone with a stalker’s tracker app installed
  And do they really check the credit on the phone at check-in?
  How do they check that roaming is allowed??

  • Ross says:

    8 Mar8 March 11:31

    Seems pretty sensible to be able to track the child in a large airport, if they get lost. External tracking isn’t really the issue here, as you know the child is going A to B.

    • Bagoly says:

      8 Mar8 March 14:13

      Put an Airtag in their pocket!

      • Expat in SJC says:

        8 Mar8 March 17:59

        No. An AirTag isn’t meant for tracking people and is engineered to avoid it for safety reasons.

        Lots of parents, however, apparently do this on school trips. It’s a nightmare for the teachers as their iPhones constantly alert them to the AirTag being near them on their own phones. this is all designed to stop people putting an AirTag on an innocent person and then tracking them to their home etc.

        There are alternatives.

• JDB says:

  8 Mar8 March 10:32

  I’m not sure the UM service was cut entirely for reasons of costs although it does use a totally disproportionate amount of staff time but the real issue is that BA doesn’t want the responsibility/liability of acting in loco parentis.

  • RussellH says:

    8 Mar8 March 10:57

    .. and the attendent risks these days of legal action if anything goes wrong.

    • Bagoly says:

      8 Mar8 March 14:19

      Exactly.
      Although US airlines still do it.
      https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/travel/accessibility-and-assistance/unaccompanied-minors.html seems well thought-through.
      It includes that relevant adults go through security at each end, which conflcts with the sign I saw recently in DFW “You must have a boarding pass to pass through security”
      In practice one doesn’t need a boarding pass to enter security at US airports, which saved my bacon on one occasion last year.

      • CamFlyer says:

        8 Mar8 March 21:24

        I believe many US airports are able to issue gate passes, for passengers who require extra support to/from the gate, such as UMs.

• Ross says:

  8 Mar8 March 11:29

  I’d be keen to know of good overseas summer camps for teens, especially in Spain (for language learning reasons). I think there is a market for split holidays – fly together, but kids go to a good camp and adults go to a nice hotel, perhaps with some together beach days at the end.

• Ishan says:

  8 Mar8 March 15:56

  I travelled to and from Kenya as an unaccompanied minor using the Skyflyer service in the 1980s. On one occasion there was two of us flying as UMs on the flight back to London and we were moved to two spare First class seats for landing.
  I’m sure that’s my origin story for collecting miles and travelling at the pointy end.

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