Reply to Would you let you 5 year old fly unaccompanied overseas?

Forum Index » Travel Discussion

Reply to "Would you let you 5 year old fly unaccompanied overseas?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]As a flight attendant, I thought that I could put my input into this thread.

I'm 40 years old and have been a flight attendant for 20 years. I'm from Vancouver and work with Air Canada. Working as a flight attendant for 20 years, I could write a whole book dedicated to the stuff that has happened to me during a flight. Some examples include: A woman throwing up in my hair when I handed her water. A man having a heart attack on the flight, and we had to take an unscheduled land to send him to the hospital. And my favourite of them all was the time a man took a shit in the aisle and I had to pick it up (with gloves) into a paper bag. I've experienced everything!

I'm actually pretty surprised about the age rules for UM's at other airlines. Air Canada's rules are that no one under the age of 8 can fly alone, and it's mandatory for children ages 8-11 to use the UM service. I've dealt with 5 UM's and 3 of the kids were nicest, most polite, independent kids I've ever met. The other 2 kids were an extreme pain. The kids were very picky about the food, complained that their Ipad was running out of battery and one kid (age 8) decided to run up and down the aisle, not listening to us, where it got to the point that the male flight attendant had to pick him up and carry him to his seat. As a flight attendant, there's so many other things that I'm doing, that having to look after a 5-year-old for a 16-hour flight wouldn't be worth the extra $100.

My DD flew her first flight by herself (with the UM service) at age 8 and it was only 4 hours. Everything went well. At age 12 she flew to London by herself, which was 8 hours, and no layovers. She did ask one of the flight attendants for help with the customs card, but other than that everything went great. Just 2 weeks ago, My DD (now 14) flew to Sydney by herself, which is a 14-hour flight and no layovers. Even at 14 I don't know if my DD can handle connecting flights because too many things can go wrong.

I certainly wouldn't let my DD fly at the age of 5, but to each their own.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics