We received a call about a 14-year-old boy, who was scheduled to travel to New York, but when he got to the airport the airline didn’t want to put him on the flight as there was no parental paperwork. The young man had no details other than his mother’s phone number in New York.
We immediately tried calling his mother but couldn’t reach her. We then called the airline check-in desk and asked them to explain what the problem was. The staff member explained to us that without parental confirmation that the child is allowed to travel, they could not allow the child to travel.
We were told that the parental confirmation has to include the child’s name, his date of birth, his address in New York, and who is picking him up from the airport, and they also needed a copy of the parent’s passport.
We advised the airline that we would do our best to take care of it, but when she told me that we only had 10 minutes to do it, we managed to persuade her to make it 15.
After trying to call the mother several times, we eventually managed to get hold of her and she sorted out all the necessary documents and emailed them to the airline in a matter of minutes.
However, we were now faced with a problem. The email address for the airline sends all emails to a central server which then directs them to the relevant departments. This can sometimes take 20 minutes. We contacted the woman at the check-in desk advising her that the email had been sent, but she couldn’t check in the child until she had seen it. The deadline for checking-in was fast approaching. We suggested that she at least check-in the child, but not issue any boarding pass or allow him through security until she received the email. She was very reluctant to do that, but we reassured her that the documents had been sent, and that we had a copy. We even offered to read out the contents of the parental confirmation. Eventually she agreed that she would check-in the child but would not allow him to proceed until she received the email from the mother.
The child made the flight and the airline called us personally to thank us for our involvement as they would not have had the time to contact the parent, to chase her, to wait for the documents, and had the child missed the flight he would then have been their problem.
Flyaison Case Involvement
- Contacted parent and ensured that all documents were in place.
- Airline staff were happy that someone was dealing with the case and therefore they could continue processing other passengers
- A previously nervous and tearful child was calmed by the knowledge that someone was working on his behalf.
