Unaccompanied minors in sleepers

[seat38a]

I'll leave it at this one last post. It seems all innocuous and fine until its your kids picture on the milk carton.

 

[Carolina Special]

When I was 13 I flew unaccompanied from Atlanta to Kansas City and then back a couple of weeks later. No issues although my dad did drive me 200 miles to the Atlanta airport so I wouldn't have to change planes.

The return trip was memorable. It was the day after the 1973 all star baseball game in KC. Hank Aaron, Darrell Evans, Davey Johnson and Braves manager Eddie Matthews were on the plane. There were a lotta home runs on that plane! Of course I was too bashful to get autographs, but that was a thrill of a lifetime.

Which I would have missed with a strict policy on minors.

 

[RSG]

I flew as an unaccompanied minor when I was age 7 or under, to visit my grandparents who wintered in Arizona. It was only once or twice and I don’t remember much about it (more memorable are similar trips with one of my aunts or older cousins). I’m pretty sure as an UM I only flew direct (which would be impossible departing from the same airport today as then).

The biggest reason the UM policies have changed, both on trains and on airlines, is the change in service standards. There are fewer cabin staff on airlines then in the glory days of air travel and fewer OBS personnel on trains. There isn’t a friendly watchful porter to shepherd small children on trains as when Maya Angelou was young (though there are other factors which made her trips unique, as suggested above). Also, there aren’t a lot of places to roam on an aircraft and not as much time to do it in. As mentioned, you don’t want younger children wandering around on a train, particularly one which has multiple stops, just for safety reasons alone.

There are also different behavioral challenges today than in years past. It may take a village to raise a child, but there are some parental units who expect the village to do most of the child-rearing, yet are more than happy to critique any errors they find in others’ efforts. Any service professional who deals with the general public can share plenty of horror stories about children who are actually accompanied. It’s not an unrealistic expectation that children who don’t live up to standards when with legal guardians might have problems when unaccompanied. In that regard, I think Amtrak’s UM policy strikes the right balance (and probably is more lenient than the one I would write).

 

[brianpmcdonnell17]

Although anyone under the age of 16 technically must follow the unaccompanied minor guidelines, it is almost impossible for them to enforce. The Amtrak website states that anyone under the age of 18 does not need ID on the train, and even when checking luggage a student ID would work, which often do not have the person's birthday on it. As long as someone looks close to 16 and does not cause any problems, it is unlikely to be an issue. I travelled on 6 Amtrak trains alone before I turned 16, and for only one of them I rode as an unaccompanied minor (Tampa-Ft. Lauderdale). I rode Baltimore-Atlanta, Atlanta-Charlotte, Charlotte-Raleigh, Raleigh-Tampa, and the Autumn Express all at 15 and it was never an issue. Once I realized that I could do that, I would not have travelled as an unaccompanied minor even if it was allowed on the route. The one time I did was one of my less enjoyable Amtrak rides as I wasn't really even permitted to walk around the train freely. Travelling as an adult also allowed me to connect to local transit without anyone picking me up, which worked well in Baltimore (MTA Maryland), Atlanta (MARTA), and New York (LIRR/Subway).

I also travelled on Southwest unaccompanied multiple times before I started travelling alone on Amtrak, as their required age is only 12 or 13. On Southwest, I went roundtrip Tampa-Chicago, and a loop trip Tampa-Washington-Atlanta-Tampa. This also did not require someone to pick me up, although someone did in every city except Atlanta, where I used MARTA.

 

[Don Newcomb]

I flew once or twice as an unaccompanied minor (in the '60s). I was tagged, like luggage, and escorted from from plane to plane and handed off from agent to agent, like a registered letter until I was delivered to the appropriate adult at the end.