Children travelling alone to the US

[minababelina]

My sister has just offered to use her miles to pay for both of my kids (10 and 13) to meet her in Miami in February, during half-term. It will be the first time they travel on their (hate the idea!) and they are quite mature. The plan is that they will travel from London to Miami with American Airlines and she will collect them from the airport. I started to crazily search for some answers but who knows someone here might have been through a similar experience recently and could help us!
1.We are aware that the company will charge for the service. And they have already said that, yes, we can use the miles for that.

1. As British citizens, I understand they need to get an ESTA visa, form found here: www.esta-registration.net/apply-esta-registration.php

3.We also need to write a letter authorising both to travel alone with details of my sister etc. Are we missing something? Thanks!!

Check the company does the Advanced Passenger Notification thing. Where you tell US customs and immigration that the children will be on the particular plane. They won't be let on without it. It's separate to ESTA.

That is not the correct link for an ESTA

This is the official site DO NOT USE ANYTHING ELSE

esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/

My 13yo was taking trains by herself, it is so good for their self confidence to feel they can do these things alone.

Is it not possible for you to travel with them, would make things a lot easier for you and possibly them too.

Wrong ESTA site; many are outright scams and overcharge people for a service that officially costs $14. Do not use this. Only use the US government's official site, its the one that VanCleefArpels wrote down. Do not use google searches ever for such things!!!. Unofficial sites pay search engines a small fortune to be at the top or nearly at the top of the first page.

I would double check AA's policy on minors and have this in writing from them. You will also need to call their Reservations department; this cannot be booked online.

www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/special-assistance/unaccompanied-minors.jsp

My friends used to travel from Hong Kong to London (boarding school) from age 7 and 11 together on their own till the age of 16.

Flight attendants were amazing, they loved it and they are confident adults with all aspects of travelling.

American Airlines will allocate them a chaperone essentially and look after them just fine!

Are they used to flying OP? Do you fly with them regularly? Are they confident with all the airport procedure? How would they react if there was turbulence on the flights? The crew have to sit down in their seats during bad turbulence and won't be able to stand there reassuring your DC. We fly back and forth to the US regularly and we had some awful turbulence over the Atlantic in Nov. If I hadn't been sitting there next to my kids (11 and 7), they'd have freaked out, particularly the 11-year-old.

Thank you so much, VanCleefArpels and AttilaTheMeerkat for the alert on the wrong ESTA site. Really stupid on my part. I hope I would have noticed once I clicked, but we never know... Juneau, yes fly regularly and I think they will be ok with the normal type of turbulence etc. Possibly not with what you describe. I think they will know what to do, but would definitely be shaken. I hope they are asleep if and when this happens! Thanks for the advice on the Advanced Passenger Notification thing, bellinisurge! And Tiredeys21, the good thing is that, if you have two kids, you only pay for one, which is always good news when you are talking 150 dollars for each way! Thanks everyone, really, really helpful!!

Not AA, but when DS was 13 he flew to Panama by himself using KLM’s UMS. They were great! He even got a special bus to pick him up planeside at Amsterdam when his flight was late and he would have otherwise missed his connection. I’d assume AA would be similar.

We had to have our letter of permission notarised, so you might want to check if the US is similar or if a non-notarised letter will do.