To think 12yo DD could fly unaccompanied minor

[overwroughtmummy]

I have a daughter that lives in the USA with her other mum. We have an informal parenting agreement that we drew up when we divorced that says she comes to visit me and her younger siblings in the summer and Christmas holidays and that we split the costs 50/50.

We kept that up for the two years pre-Covid with either myself or my ex-wife chaperoning, then obviously during the lockdowns I missed out. Now travel has resumed and she came in the summers of 2021-2023 but didn’t come either Christmas because my ex said she couldn’t afford it. Until this year I had a little more disposable income/savings and we fell into a bad pattern where I would pay for the flights up front and my ex paid me back over time (sometimes taking 6 months plus). Now I can no longer afford to do that. Add on top of that the cost of flights going from just under £2k to now £3.5k and the general cost of living it’s become unaffordable for either of us to fly her out here twice a year.

DD is 12 and now very used to airports and flying. I’ve suggested that DD could fly as an unaccompanied minor as this would almost cut the costs by two thirds (it would remove a return flight on each end of her trip, but add £100-200 unaccompanied minor fees) but when I mention it I get shut down. It would mean either a connecting flight or my ex driving her a couple of hours to the nearest airport with direct flights. But a four hour round trip on each end is very different to 48h of flying back and forth and two days annual leave on each end to travel and recover, and would save both of us a couple of thousand pounds a year.

Ex wife is terrified of flying, and very overprotective so I think this is playing in here. But I’m now only getting to see DD for a few weeks a year as there’s always some reason why she can’t come for the whole summer and that’s neither what we agreed or good for maintaining my relationship with DD.

Tldr/ AIBU to think that 12yo DD who is an experienced flyer could fly USA-UK as an unaccompanied minor with a paid airline chaperone?

Eh I'm not sure the actual flying unaccompanied is the issue in this case, though. A happy, well-adjusted child would almost certainly not find it traumatic. I think this speaks more to your (and Matthew Perry's!) complex relationships with your parents and how unsettled the going between made you feel, rather than the actual act of going on a plane unaccompanied. The fact you felt abandoned is about your parental relationships and lack of a secure sense of self, not about flying twice a year on your own.

For me, it was going between two happy places, so I didn't have any additional 'baggage' (excuse the pun) caught up in the travel.

I think the PPs saying it might be that your daughter might be the one who doesn’t want to go are possibly right. And even if it’s not the case now it probably will be in future. So I would be thinking about how to holiday in the states. Christmas they’ll probably be fine with.

I flew twice as an unaccompanied minor from UK to US, think I was about 8 then 11 or so, it was totally fine - parents brought me to the airport on our side, I had a chaperone to get from A to B at the airports, only female passengers were allowed to be sat next to me, then my friend's family who were hosting me met me at the airport on the other side. Was years ago, think I travelled with BA and don't remember any issues at all.

How does the 12 year old feel? Do they want to do it? If they do I think you need a court order to finalise things. But - as someone in a similar situation I think you might find unless you are prepared to go and spend time with her where she lives the arrangement will be short lived as she gets older.

My dd is now 20 and her dad has lived in the USA since she was 6 - he moved out there. We’d been split up - my choice - since she was 6 months old. As she got older he wanted her to travel by herself but she wasn’t keen at all (she had been flying out with her grandparents/ his mum and dad as they would visit every year). She didn’t want to leave her friends and spend weeks and weeks somewhere just to be with her dad as she got older and her grandparents also got older / health issues and didn’t go as much. He never bothered to come over here - could stay with his mum and dad who live an hour away, and money isn’t really an issue either (too outing but he’s married to someone very, very wealthy and has taken early retirement himself). So now dd and him have no relationship at all. The odd birthday card between them and that’s it.

I think you have to think long term about what’s going to work.

I used to fly unaccompanied minor between two continents. Always felt safe and had a kids waiting room to ourselves. Sometimes I'd have long layovers of about 3-5 hrs if you consider that long. We'd get a meal or snack and actually loved that freedom of flying without an adult present. I was always handed over to a member of staff and ID was checked with whomever I was to meet at the airport either my dad or my aunt and uncle.

I did it from age 7 and had no problems, including an emergency landing for a bomb scare when I was 9.

I flew, alone, in 1967,aged 12, to America.

In those days, minors went in the care of the air hostesses - if that still exists, it's fine.🙂

Part of the issue is absolutely that she wants some of her holiday to be near her friends which is why I’ve been flexible about her not staying the entire summer. This summer she was here for 6 weeks and still has 5 weeks left of her summer vacation to spend with her friends. She also had a phone and kept in touch playing Roblox and Minecraft etc daily. Before covid she did also ask about spending every other Christmas here, so she could have some Christmases with her US family, which I agreed to but has since been moot.

I would love to go and spend time in the US with her, but I have three young children here two of whom are at school so we’re tied to school holidays, which don’t have a very good overlap. I also have a job which can’t be done abroad so I’m limited by annual leave. I think at some point in the future we will try to have a family holiday in the US to spend time with her there but that’s not practical or affordable right now.

Have you spoken to her about what she wants to do? I know you said that she chose to spend every other Christmas with you but since then she hasn't done that. Maybe she isn't happy coming to stay at yours and prefers to be at home, if so you might have to cut it down further to her just coming for a couple of weeks in the summer and you go by yourself for a week during the winter. She is at that age now where she also needs to have a say. If you have a new partner your younger kids can be looked after at home whilst you are away. It doesn't solve the problem of her flying on her own, but by next year your DD will be 13 so maybe the other mother and DD will feel more OK with her flying on her own.

Perfectly fine using an airlines UM service at 12. She'll be accompanied at all stages. Not all airlines allow transits so check out the airline options carefully and some have rules about no UM's on last flights of the day. At 12 she'll be classed as an adult for fare purposes either traveling with you or as a UM. The UK reduce taxes for U16's travelling in the lowest class of travel so the airline should do an adjustment for that. You usually have to book the flight & UM service at the same time over the phone.

Apologies, I know I'm just being nosey, but how did you come to be living so far apart from each other in the first place?

Oh 100%! I’ve just always found it interesting that my parents divorce did not bother me one jot until I was triggered on a plane a long time later as an adult, and now have an extreme flight phobia.

Are you getting “2 separated parents happily coparenting and a child that is gleefully skipping between the two happy homes on two continents vibes” though? I’m not!

If the question was simply, “Do you think a 12 year old would be ok to travel as an unaccompanied minor?” I’d say that’s different, but there are issues in the OP that are jumping out at me to make it a little more complicated. Flying alone to stay with a parent you only see for a couple of weeks a year is a very emotionally complex thing to deal with for many children.

For what it’s worth when one of my parents first started displaying signs of dementia they kept obsessing over the guilt they felt that they didn’t just move to my home country instead of seeing me only a couple of weeks a year.

You don’t really get to chose (& your parents don’t get to chose for you, no matter how secure they try to make you feel) whether you will find being shuttled about alone between continents traumatic or not.

would not want a 12 year old girl
travelling alone. Too many variables
and risks in my mind

With a chaperone? Like what?

What does your DD think? Sounds like a sensible solution in theory.

My dc have done this at that age and are keen to do it again ( now much older).
But there weren't any layovers, they were together and they were visiting a grandmother for a couple of weeks so no trauma issues.
The actual flying itself should be okay if your dc is okay with the idea.

I would fly unaccompanied from Spain to England from 1987, I was 13. And enjoyed every bit of it. No problem whatsoever. It was with B.A. I think it depends on the child and longhaul is steeper than shorthaul.

I agree @PeppermintMandy . This post has very little to do with the practicalities of an UM flying and whether or not people agree that it can be done. It has everything to do with a girl who doesn't want to be uprooted twice a year for quite extended periods to go and stay with a parent they don't spend their everyday life with and three very young half siblings in a country that isn't theirs and where they don't have their friends and resident mother. It's emotionally tricky for all involved but the child has to come first.

Definitely reasonable

But only if the child herself feels ok about it.

I'm in Australia. Lots of people i know flew internationally as children - I flew interstate alone from 4 and internationally at 15, my husband was 11 when sent for the first time to stay in Scotland with grandparents.

It does sound like you need an intermediary to help communicate with other parent.

Seems reasonable to me given what you have described.

As has mentioned earlier rules vary, it's all airline specific..

For info since they've been mentioned BA don't do an escorted UM service anymore..minimum age with them unaccompanied is 14.

I'm not quite sure where I've given the impression that DD doesn't want to visit. The lack of Christmas visits post-Covid has been because her other mum hasn't been able to pay her half and I can't afford to fully cover the cost of three return flights at peak season. Prior to Covid she did say that she'd like a Christmas with her US family, and that's what we'd agreed but then Covid happened and she couldn't come in 2020 anyway, and since then it's been a money issue rather than a wanting to be here issue.

She is getting older and values time with her friends in the USA, which I've been sensitive to. I've made sure she gets time back in the USA while she is still on holiday to go away with her family there and see her friends rather than flying here the minute school ends and returning right before it starts. They get three months so she's spent only about half of that here this year.

The need for shorter trips is really what's prompted me wanting to explore the option of UM as then she could come more frequently or other times of year rather than being "stuck" here for long stretches. She often comments on how much she misses seeing us all and doing things with us, especially on how much she's missing the little ones' milestones. She talks on FaceTime with her siblings when time differences allow and she and I FaceTime and/or text every day.

It's obviously not the same, I haven't been a residential parent to her since she was 6 and it absolutely kills me. But I am still her mum and we have a pretty good relationship and I'd like it to stay that way. I don't think she feels like she's being shipped off to someone she doesn't know, and where she doesn't have any friends (she actually does have a few friends here of her own age that she's made through various activities), but I'll make sure I do check in with her that she doesn't feel that way. There is undeniably trauma around the split and divorce and her other mum and I are working really hard to undo that, but money and how to get DD here in the least stressful and costly way is a sticking point right now.

@overwroughtmummy

“I'm not quite sure where I've given the impression that DD doesn't want to visit.”

You haven’t, other people have projected their opinions in that regard. As I said in my original post, if your daughter is happy to do it then that’s the most important thing. No human relationships are ever without trauma and compromise - even those in families where parents are still together - and it sounds like you are doing your level best to negotiate those hurdles. If she is happy, it’s financially easier and the end result is more face to face time with her family on this side of the pond then it sounds like a good solution. I wish you luck.

Yep that’s why I said BA is 14.

My daughter has flown as an unaccompanied minor a few times between parents one of whom she sees a few times a year.
One route I think she is one of a small number of people who have done it as Mumbai had no idea how to handle it. The other route was not many people either.

She was about 12 first time and had a phone and SIM cards for both countries.

It was never an issue. Once she was over 15 she does the flight alone.

I would absolutely not have been comfortable with DS flying unaccompanied at 12 and wouldn't have allowed it. Seems I'm in the minority though.