Leaving a child at the airport

[Longboardpedro]

I have 3 kids with my wife. She is from Germany but we live in the UK. She had tickets to head back to see family for new years.

Unfortunately my eldest daughter only had 2 months left on her passport so when they reached the final gate for departure, my eldest was turned away from flying.

I had to collect her and bring her home whilst my wife carried on with her trip to germany with the 2 other kids. My eldest was heartbroken.

I was shocked, as this is something I could never do. We either all go or no one goes is how I approach things but keen to get some feedback from other parents on their opinions if that was OK?

It all depends on how it was managed.

If your wife was able to remain with your 9yo until you arrived to collect her then this is vastly different to your wife leaving a 9yo to fend for themselves until you could get there?

What exactly happened @Longboardpedro ? How was it all managed?

I am torn as I couldn't imagine leaving one of mine in this situation but if we were all at the airport, dad was able to collect and look after the child without a valid passport (and the child was in agreement - that would be a big issue for me - and I couldn't imagine any of mine agreeing to being "left behind") then I would have to consider continuing with the trip.

It's a pretty bold thing for your wife to have done.

No, I had no idea that airlines had ground staff despite having repeatedly and extensively referred to them in my posts.
So thank you for that valuable insight.

I can come up with some even more implausible explanations for this story if you’d like. Eg, maybe OP’s wife told ground crew that OP was airside because he was due to catch a flight elsewhere, so she’d been able to palm the 9YO off that way? Or that a relative worked at the airport? Are under-pressure ground crew really going to interrogate her and ask for proof or are they going to take the path of least resistance, board the wife and other children and that way avoid delaying the flight by removing bags from the plane?

But all this just further supports my point that there seems to be no plausible explanation, and neither you nor anyone else has come anywhere close to providing one (feel free to prove me wrong, genuinely).

Either OP has left out big chunks of the story, he’s massively embellished it or he’s made it up completely.

I feel sorry for your daughter - she must be so disappointed

But no big disaster. You get to spend time with your child, your wife and other children get to spend time together with family

It's not simply about being disappointed though is it? @Butchyrestingface or reframing the time as a bonus with dad @Barney16 ?

It's about the 9 year olds sense of being dispensible. The Mum made an error and the only person affected was dd1.

Exactly! The OP clearly said they were just about to board at the departure gate when the passport issue was flagged, so there would probably only be 30 mins or so before takeoff, not long at all for OP to travel back to the airport and get to where his DD was.

It does sound like his wife called him, said DD can’t go so come back and get her, and then went off on her merry way with the younger DC.

Absolutely callous and she did abandon her. OP has every right to be angry and is not to blame for this at all. They may have planned this trip without him as he had to work, and his wife could have dumped DD knowing that.

Doubt he’ll come back to clarify with the ridiculous accusations on this thread.

Think it depends if she was travelling on British or German passport. The rules for British passport holders changed after Brexit and airlines have no discretion.

Also, this is the guidance on unaccompanied minors travel generally, so are you saying all these forms would have been filled in a the gate once the childcare staff had been magically summonsed?

Am not sure what you’re trying to say tbh.

“The unaccompanied minor forms require you to list a parent or guardian who will be picking up your child at the gate once they have landed. It is vitally important to ensure the same person who is listed on the form is the person who picks the child up.

Due to legal reasons, airlines are not permitted to hand over a child to someone who is not listed on the documentation or without ID, even if they are a family member.

Unaccompanied minors will be the last off the plane. The flight attendant will deliver them to their waiting parent or guardian along with the forms that were signed at the start of the journey from the departure point. These forms are again signed by the attendant and the receiver who is collecting the child, completing the final leg of their journey. ”

https://help.flightcentre.co.uk/s/article/children-travelling-alone-uk

Airlines have discretion - they could have put her on the plane. However, they would then be responsible for flying her back at their expense when she got turned around at German passport control (along with any other passengers they deliver who don’t have clearance to enter Germany).

You keep coming up with far fetched scenarios that bare no relationship to airline responsibilities or airport security. Anyone turned around at the gate would be accompanied back to groundside by airport or airline staff for security reasons. A minor would be supervised until handed over to their parent. If a parent didn’t turn up then police and social services would be called.

This is one of the most insane replies I’ve ever seen. Absolutely proves my point that mumsnetters will do all they can to put 100% of the blame on any man, no matter what the woman has done or what her own responsibilities were.

Whilst I agree it's a ridiculous post, it's equally ridiculous to use as evidence of a mumsnet hive mind opinion that men are to blame for everything.

How do you know? This is not clear in the OP posts, unless you are the mother of cause.

Even if the father was able to pick the child up while the mother was still waiting to check in. I absolutely would not take 1 child away with me and leave 1 child at home. I would own up to my mistake, cancel and rebook for another date.

I would never take 1 child away with me and not the other, I treat my children the same. If 1 cannot go, non of us go!

There is no right or wrong here; your wife’s choice was reasonable and avoided wasting the majority of the tickets, and the alternative was to disappoint everyone instead of just one person. Had your wife decided not to go at all, that would also have been reasonable.

Luckily you have the week to make it fun and special for your 9 year old with you. It’s just a few days. Have a wonderful time together.

@SkiingonKaraSea airlines can also be fined for allowing non eligible passengers to travel . Surely it would be worse and distressing to turn her around on arrival in Germany , and would the airline carry an unaccompanied child back with no notice or force the whole group to return.

Sigh.

We really are going round in circles here.

It is absolutely inconceivable that the airline would (in 30 minutes!) arrange childcare and/or security staff to accompany the 9 year old back to landside in order to allow the rest of the family to board, rather than just deny boarding to the whole family and insist everyone is taken back groundside.

That information I posted shows how forms need to be filled in and processes followed for an unaccompanied minors - they’re not just going to let the mum palm her off and then hand her over to anyone who fancies claiming her at the other end.

There is zero chance this happened.

Oh come on, these messages are insane. Seems like a lot of posters are "celebrating" already! Or simply cant read.

Mum is a twat, did not check the passport and just left the kid behind because she wanted to go to Germany no matter what. Dad was unhappy as he thought they all should stay but he picked their poor DC and did his best to make her feel better. He came on this thread saying he did not agree with this trip going ahead and asking for an opinion. And - its not his job to check everything for his wife's trip, she's an adult and this was her responsibility. She basically fucked up things for everyone.

I doubt little girl was left completely on her own in the airport, I can't imagine anyone allowing this to happen. She most likely was escorted out by someone to meet dad. This was not the point of OP though. It was more to do with leaving your child behind and going on holiday.

Maybe her mum just went back to the security with her and just sent her out? Why make an issue of something that is not an issue.

This thread is MN at it's best, the woman is almost never wrong!

Because:
a) there wouldn’t have been time for the mum to do this given the plane was boarding. Depending on the airport it could easily be a 20 minute return trip from the gate back to security, more with young kids in tow.
b) the child wouldn’t have been allowed to go through security unaccompanied, the mum and the siblings would have had to go through with her
c) the mum and siblings would then have had to go back through security the right way, which generally involves a queue in addition to waiting for bags to come through the scanner, and there definitely wouldn’t have been time to do this.

The OP used the term 'she was 9' which was odd at first glance, but could mean she's now ten and her birthday is during the Christmas break.

I imagine that a foreign parent would apply for a passport immediately after the birth. That would match things up perfectly.

What about his wife, the one who was taking the child on the trip? Surely she must be responsible.

I hold my DS passport and his EU ID card as I quite often travel solo with him. So checking renewal dates etc is my responsibility.

Too late now for this trip, but if your children are eligible for German citizenship your wife should sort out passports or ID cards as a backup; I always take both.

Travelling home is never a 'holiday'. We don't live in either of our home countries; travelling to either always involves lots of visiting, usually some life admin, and relatively little down time.

I have a feeling they would have not gone as far as security. There are passport checks at every point, I bet she was stopped before.
In any case, unless you have been in exact same situation, you would have no way of knowing what exactly happened. So no point of listing all of your assumptions. It did happen, mum went on the trip, kid went back home with dad. it wasn't even the point of the OP.

OP says they were stopped at the gate. It’s quite common for this to be the only place passport validity is checked. It happened to friends of mine who were denied boarding for a holiday to Greece due to a passport export date.

no need to waste everyone’s tickets, send her, get an emergency appointment at the passport office (in person) and you could be done in a couple of days.

This. If you weren't going then it's not in fact a case of "we all do it or none of us does it". Also check out if you can get your DD an emergency appointment for a passport. You'll have to pay and it's a huge faff but a friend who was in the same predicament got a ppt in 2 days. So you could poyentiallt send DD to meet the rest of the family within a couple of days.