From: www.courant.com
By DEL QUENTIN WILBER
July 29, 2007

The odyssey of Jordan Bell and Dominic Turner recently was typical of the travails afflicting thousands of air travelers in this turbulent summer travel season: a two-hour tarmac delay, a missed connection to get home to Washington, an unexpected overnight stay in Chicago, a flight scrubbed by mechanical problems, a mad dash to make another flight, and bags that didn’t turn up for two days.


Except Jordan, 13, and Dominic, 14, were no ordinary passengers. They were flying alone with nervous parents hundreds of miles away.

Thousands of children fly unaccompanied each day on U.S. airlines - an estimated 650,000 fly alone on United, American and Southwest airlines annually, with the heaviest loads occurring in the summer and over the holidays, the carriers say.

“If 10 was the most stressful I could have felt, I was a 20,” said Maria Buell, a restaurant owner in Florida who sent her kids on a trip to visit their grandparents in New York last month on a US Airways flight. The children faced delays at their connecting flight, and didn’t arrive at their destination until 3:30 a.m., Buell said.

Despite the frustrations, most children make it safely through the system without major hassles. Airlines assign employees to escort children and bring them to secure rooms where they can wait for connections. That service usually costs a fee. Children under 5 are generally not permitted to fly without an adult, and most carriers will not allow children to take the last flight of the day, which reduces the chance of youths getting stuck at airports overnight.

The parents of Jordan and Dominic didn’t think to schedule their ATA Airlines flights through cities where they have friends. But they got lucky when the boys were stranded in Chicago on July 9 after they missed their Washington-bound connection from Dallas because of delays. They worked the phones, and Jordan’s stepfather, Russell Robinson, eventually got in touch with a college friend who picked up the boys and took them in for the night.

Robinson concedes that the parents didn’t pay the $60 fee or fill out paperwork to obtain airline escorts.

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