Unaccompanied minor-London to Belfast

[Plankingplanks]

Hi all. Quite a conundrum I'm hoping people can help with. Need to get my 13 year old to Belfast to stay with his grandparents, unaccompanied but BA, Ryan Air and Easyjet no longer accept unaccompanied minors.

Aer Lingus do accept under 16 but all flights appear to be code shared with BA who will not accept him.

Only option I can think of is to fly him there myself then fly back on the next available flight which is 13 hours later.

Grandparents can't do it and so it will have to be me, but that means I have to take 2 days leave from work. Doable but thought I'd check for other options first!

Which London airport? I've flown Aer Lingus from Heathrow to Belfast City so they do fly on their own metal, not codeshare.

i know he can't go an an official UM but cant he just fly unaccompanied?
I did to France, aged 12. But that was a long time ago.

and agree re Aer Lingus. Even if it is codeshared with BA, if you book via Aer Lingus nd the flight is operated by Aer Lingus it should be fine. Codeshared means exactly that the that flight number is used by BA but its still an Aer Lingus flight (well some of them will be, and vv)

Loganair fly from the UK to Belfast and take 12-15-year-olds without adults.

seems mad that when I was 11 I traveled from the UK to Saudi often alone and usually changing at LHR and BAH, also traveled every 6 weeks back to school usually with Ryanair or Aerlingus - quite often did the coach and ferry from Birmingham via Holyhead.

just googled you are indeed correct you need to be 16 for Easyjet and 14 for BA. In your shoes I'd call aer lingus.

Same here flew a lot on my own due to being as school in Ireland and my parents in the UK and Saudi and later Malta

The rules have changed on unaccompanied minors and code share @StillWantingADog the company that is flying rules apply (I could write a novel about unaccompanied minors as I’ve dealt with it a lot over the last 6 months)

Have you looked at flights from both airports at Belfast. If you do fly yourself then it's around 30-45mins between airports if you could get a quicker flight out of a different airport than the one you arrived at.

Thanks all, I didn't realise that it wasn't too far from the airports so will look into a transfer.

15 years ago my eldest regularly flew to USA unaccompanied so I really didn't expect to encounter this problem. I will look into some of the other airlines mentioned as well.

Please keep suggestions coming in!! 🤣

I'd just do a day return for you. Much less of a headache. Can't you just take a day off work?

OP, would you be open for him flying as an unaccompanied minor non direct? TAP also do UM and can just fly unaccompanied from 12. Aer lingos allows children to fly unaccompanied, but doesn’t have an unaccompanied minor service if that makes sense.
What’s he like flying? Sensible in general?

Good grief. From when DH was 11 to 16, (and his brother only a year older), they flew unaccompanied from London to India every boarding school summer holiday to be with their parents. Often having to change planes in Paris. Nobody thought twice about it.
Airlines nowadays seem to be very unhelpful. How on earth do boarding school kids get home?

@Babdoc with great difficulty!
the American airline are much easier. UK ones are the most difficult in my experience.

I know. My son flew unaccompanied (using the BA UM service) at 8. This seems crazy.

He is pretty sensible and will ask for help if needed but blimey, this is turning into a headache

No idea. I travelled alone with my younger sister when I was 12 and she was 10. Parents dropped off one end, grandparents collected the other.

Everything is much more complicated now!

I spoke to Grandparents and decided to book a flight to Dublin instead. Then he can fly unaccompanied with no issues. In another change you now don't have to pay air duty for 12-15 year old so it ended up being cheaper than a Ryanair flight. £100 return so all in all not bad

Agreed, things have really changed for the worse, but judging by some postings on some other threads ATM you'd think children flying unaccompanied, even as official UMs, was cruel and unusual punishment...

I was at one of the airlines that scrapped the UM service a while back..I think we on the shop floor pretty much all thought the decision was crap, we knew it being scrapped made things difficult for some (boarding school factor), we all knew it would cost the airline business and possibly life long loyalty...head office answer was "but costs"....so it went..

Sorry for the ramble which doesn't help the OP...

Assuming the gps are ok to pick him up from Dublin this looks like a good outcome. Ridiculous that it’s so hard though.

The first time I did this, to make sure they got to the gate and onto the plane etc I bought a one way ticket for the cheapest flight that day so that I could go airside. £8.90 well spent!