To think that if 16 year olds need a letter of consent to travel overseas without parents, then this should be publicised?

[MrsSchadenfreude]

DD1, who is a few months short of 17, recently went on a walking holiday in Turkey with a friend and her family. I checked the gov.uk website before she left, and also that of the airline, and neither mentioned the need for a letter of consent from parents to travel (the airline said it was needed for under 16s).

DD1 was held up by the airline, who called Immigration, who gave her the nth degree questioning, finally letting her board, when she showed them an email from me, giving details of her travel insurance. On return to UK, she got held up for even longer, being questioned about where she had been, what she had done, with the IO telling her that she should have a letter from her parents giving permission to travel, and that she "would exceptionally land her on this occasion, but next time to remember that she needed a letter." DD1 was quite upset by the whole experience.

Is this a new thing, and if so, where is it publicised, that you need a letter? What if I had let DD1 get married - would she have needed a parental letter to go on her honeymoon with her new husband? I understand that they are feeling a bit sore after the recent "jihadi brides" going to Syria, but DD1 in no way fits this profile, was wearing all her walking gear to travel, and was going nowhere near the border with Syria.

Thank you all for your comments. I'm not aware of any non-Muslim girls rushing to join ISIS from the UK. Yes, there have been some from non-Muslim families who have converted, but I don't see any who have nothing to do with Islam rushing out there.

The UK Visas site refers to foreign people coming to the UK, not to British nationals returning.

And the c & p from P & O refers to those over 16 who are unaccompanied. She wasn't unaccompanied, she was with a family - admittedly not hers, but she wasn't travelling alone.

Also those links that Want2be has cited are all about adults taking children abroad, not older children traveling alone. I get that that is relevant to the OP, but it's not very helpful for those of us who are sending their older children to visit friends/family and have had the same experience. I would have happily sent dd off with a letter had I known she needed one, as she had a very anxious time after a ten hour flight which obviously I would have liked for her to avoid.

YABU - the world has changed. I'm flying on my own with the DC this summer and will carry a letter from DH giving me permission to fly with the kids and their birth certificates. We live in the U.S. and the authorities get very sensitive around children leaving the country without both parents giving consent. I don't blame them and think it's a sensible approach to take. I've had immigration question the letter because it wasn't notorized and offered they call DH. The took me up on my offer and called him. We were leaving the country not returning.

I have spent the past 18 years - right up to this year - flying in and out of the US with one or more children without their father and have never been stopped, questioned, looked at sideways or anything. For some of that time I was not a US citizen. During all of those years, I have a different last name to my children - have gone through heathrow, have gone direct to Ireland, to Spain etc. as has dh. we have never been questioned. Dh has also traveled alone with the children and has never been questioned. We have never carried our children's birth certificates with us and certainly never a letter of permission to travel - just their passports. we have never had a problem.

The passport is the consent to travel. And we certainly had to prove that both of us consented to issuing of that passport - for both US and EU passports.

Sounds like it is quite arbitrary how you are treated.

I'm not sure that would work Soup Dragon because the issue here is whether that person has the right to do something without parental permission, and the law governing the parent/child relationship would be the law of Scotland, regardless of where the child went.

No it's the law of the country you are in that applies. An English couple of 16 year olds can marry in Scotland without parental permission and that marriage is valid in England because it is recognised as the same but a couple of Scottish 16 year olds cannot marry in England without their parents' consent.

This particular case is muddied by the airline, if flying BA once you are on the plane which law applies English or Scottish or International?

nooka A child is a child per their definition. Doesn't matter if they are 17.5 or 0.5 in age if a child is defined as under 18. The same rules apply. They don't change because the child got older and can answer back. Your child, even if 17.5, if a child is defined as younger than 18, needs a letter to avoid awkward immigration problems at their destination and when returning to the UK.

Canyou Well I fly out of Newark and its been like this every single time from two years ago and my eldest is 3.5. They are really nice about it (preferred they called DH to double check rather than ask me a million questions). Manchester airport was also the same way but they are bloody rude as always. DH was with DD on his own trying to fly from Heathrow on United and I was at a different terminal trying to fly with BA with DS. We were both stopped by immigration to ensure US visa's and they wanted parental consent letters for both of us. DH had a harder time because a stupid woman was looking through his notarized letter and asked DH if he was DD's father all the time with DD was nagging DH saying 'Daddy, DADDY..... DAAAAADDDDDYYYY I have a poo poo in my panties. Can you take me to the bathroom. Its yucky!' He was so tempted to say 'Best be safe so get her mother. She is somewhere in T5'.

Want2be I wasn't thinking so much about the age of the minor, just the circumstances. In my mind the letter with the other parent is for that parent, not for the child IYSWIM? A younger child wouldn't be traveling alone, or would be traveling as an unaccompanied minor, so it's really just the child old enough to travel alone scenario that needs a bit of extra guidance.

I wondered whether my dd was picked up because few parents think it's OK for a 14 year old girl to travel alone and so she stood out a bit in a way her same aged brother did not (I was very surprised when her same aged cousin visited us and came unaccompanied minor along with several other girls her age).

As with all things border related it is very dependent on the whim/instinct of the individual border guard.

Nooka I am not surprised she was asked some questions.

It isn't that a 14 year old isn't capable of speaking up for themselves but what if your daughter didn't have parental consent to leave the country? There are women being trafficked so I think it is right they ask questions. I am not surprised that she was asked some questions based on her age but it does worry me that your son wasn't questioned in the same way.

Our DC are still too young to fly solo but once they are we will be using the unaccompanied minor service until they are 18. I expect that with the recent incidents it going to become a requirement to use this service for all persons travelling unaccompanied (i.e. not with someone over 18) who are under the age of 18.

My DCs use BA's Unaccompanied Minors service several times a year to fly between me and their father, who lives overseas. They've done it since they were tiny. (They've never once had a letter of consent with them.)

BA require you to pay for this service if your DCs are under 12. If they are over 12, however, you do not have to use the service and they can, apparently, fly by themselves. When I took DS (13) to Heathrow at Easter, the check-in staff looked at me a bit askance and reminded me that we didn't need to pay the extra for this service if we didn't want to, as DS is aged over 12. So the message I got was that the airline was totally relaxed about DCs travelling without their parents.

Like the OP, I would not have thought to have sent a letter of consent for my DCs to fly without a parent. Surely the fact that you have booked and paid for a ticket shows that you have given consent?

What have Border Force replied to you when you wrote in to them to complain?

Want2B, it is possible that right from the start immigration recognised that no one at all would want to abduct my particular children :).

Wonder if it is a Newark thing. We normally fly in and out of Boston and have literally never been questioned.

Want2be I'm not bothered that they asked her some questions, I think that was fine. What bothered me is that after she told them that she was spending a week with various family members, and that she was being met at the gate they decided that they didn't like her answers, took her out of the line, put her in a little room, questioned her some more, took our phone numbers and disappeared on her.

They then rang my mobile but not our home number or dh's mobile and as we were fast asleep (it was 2 in the morning I think) didn't get through immediately. They didn't go and tell dd that for half an hour or so, and so she got very upset. When the agent talked to us she was pretty shirty about the lack of the letter, and implied we were fairly rubbish parents. But at no point in the flight booking process was there anything that suggested a letter was required, and as she was going into the UK, her place of birth/citizenship I didn't think to look at the UK immigration site about entry to the UK.

I am sure the reason why they paid more attention to dd than ds is because she is a girl, and yes I suppose it was good that they were concerned, but an English girl essentially coming home doesn't seem likely to me to be highly at risk, and if she was a runaway a letter purporting to be from me could be easily faked. Indeed dd could have given anyone's number as being a parent too.

Anyway, next time they will both take letters.

Right, I have spoken to the FCO Travel Advice people, who have showed me that, buried deep in the gov.uk website is indeed a small paragraph that tells you that if you are travelling with a child for whom you do not have parental responsibility [https://www.gov.uk/permission-take-child-abroad here]], then you need to obtain a letter from the parent giving permission (I asked if it needed to be notarised, given that anyone could cobble together a letter, but they didn't know), and it needs to be shown to the airline/immigration. I suggested that they put this information on the travel advice website, as this is where people are more likely to look for information.

I asked how this worked for children travelling on their own, given that BA and Eurostar let children over the age of 12 travel on their own. They didn't know (this doesn't appear to be covered by the gov.uk site), but said that this was for HO, not FCO. They will ask.

I asked if it should apply to all under 18s, given that 16 appears to be the age of majority in Scotland. They will ask the Home Office - again, not their area.

They did not know why DD1 had been held up on arrival in UK, rather than departing, but again, they're not responsible for immigration. They acknowledged that it was a huge topic, with lots of issues that needed to be covered (and probably weren't covered adequately at the moment), and would pass my concerns to the Home Office.

Conclusion: it all seems to be a bit of a mess and not thought through properly, but regardless of what the airline say, send your child with a letter up to the age of 18.

Link here I don't think it's particularly well written, as it seems to refer more to divorced parents, rather than taking a schoolfriend on holiday.

canyou I hear you! I was ready to leave my kids at immigration once at Manchester airport after a 6 hr flight with each kids taking turns to scream. Truthfully I think the reason the stop so much at Newark is because there is a huge issue with parents who are still married taking kids out of the country and there is a sizable Muslim population here and they are concerned about protecting their citizens. I have seen a girl with dual Pakistani and american citizenship being taken back to Pakistan to be married off. She didn't board the plane and her parents were hysterical. I really felt for them but I think border control took the right action.

OP - no it's not well written and the fact they couldn't tell you if the letter needs to be notorized is a joke.

The correct answer to that question is 'if you want no issues with said letter giving your permission for you child to travel out of the country you need to get it notorized.'

Yanbu - the requirements for parental consent should be clearer.

But immigration and airlines are not being unreasonable either when checking on minors travelling alone to and from Turkey.

I'm laughing at all those saying "at least they checked".

Yes - by asking the 16 Year Old and her travelling companions, and then believing what they said!

It's hardly confidence inspiring is it?

It's either some jumped up little person with a big hat flexing their authority or another badly thought out piece of mindless bureaucracy....