Flying After Adoption Order

[ScaredAdopter]

Hi folks - we’ve had our adoption order granted a couple of weeks ago, but not yet received the order. We are due to travel with our LO next week and had agreed with her SW that we had permission and that the SW would provide us a letter confirming consent to travel.

We don’t have the letter yet and I’m not hopeful we’ll get it before we travel now.

So we have LO’s passport showing her with a different surname than us, but no adoption order and no consent letter.

Just wondering if anyone has experience of travelling in these circumstances? Worried that we will be denied boarding - but is it just a case of explaining to the airline?

hi @ScaredAdopter

i travelled with my son before the adoption order, we did have a letter from the SW but we were not stopped or questioned about the different names at either end.

I had thought we would as I am a single adopter, he is black, I’m white and we were going to West Africa so prime suspects for child trafficking!
Have you any other documentation eg an email from the SWs agreeing to the holiday, or anything from the time of placement that you could print out just in case?
Hope you get away ok

We took our son age 5 prior to adoption, to Northern Cyprus for a wedding. He had different surname to us and we were placed in the back of the plane and him in the front.I smiled and said to the steward would he mind asking who ever sat next to him could they tube feed him every 4 hours. They soon sorted things out! Sorry to be trite but it still makes me laugh.

Could you let us know how it goes please? I've booked to take my little boy abroad in June, am hoping everything will be sorted by then re the adoption order and name. He currently has a passport in his birth name but I've booked with my surname (I suppose I could change name on the booking if it came to it). He'll have been home for 11 months by then and I want to go away before I start back in school in July, the only time I'll be able to make use of term time pricing 😂. On a positive, I have taken my nephews abroad twice without their parents (different surname to me) and wasn't stopped or questioned.

We are foster carers and have taken a number of babies away with us with different surnames and different passports (we have Irish and the foster children have British) and have never been asked for any documentation to prove we are allowed to travel with them. We always have a letter but never asked! I think you should be fine.

Just to update for those asking - we ended up getting the letter just in time.

But no one asked for it at any stage of our travel or even asked any questions about why our LO had a different surname.