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Teenagers face extra challenges when flying alone
Most of us will never forget our first solo plane ride. Whether you made that flight when you were seven or seventeen, getting on an airplane alone for the first time is a very grown-up feeling. A little scary, a little special, definitely memorable.
Unfortunately, for teen travelers it can also be confusing and expensive. The New York Times takes a peek into the world of minors traveling alone, and it’s a minefield of conflicting rules and extra fees.
air travel for kids
If you’re preparing to travel by plane to your Thanksgiving destination, surely you’ve heard about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)’s controversial new pat-downs and body scanners.
Last week, Madeline wrote that some families are so fed up with the new invasive safety regulations that they’re calling on air travelers to opt out of the TSA’s full-body scans on Wednesday, November 24th and instead submit to enhanced pat downs — which will inevitably slow down travel on what’s traditionally the busiest travel day of the year. Continue reading »
A Boston-based TSA agent was charged with child rape, sparking concerns and criticism from privacy and passenger advocates who continue to be unhappy with the new full-body scanners in use at many airports.
Just who does the TSA have manning those scanners anyway?
While this guy’s arrest had nothing to do with his professional duties, its unnerving at best to think of a pedophile patting down my daughter as we enter an airplane. It’s certainly not a thought that make me feel more secure.
Over the weekend, I flew from Boston to Tucson on US Airways. Our trip involved three separate flights, and on each one, I was seated far away from my kids.
When I first noticed this on my boarding pass, I approached the gate agent with a joke, “Hi! I don’t want to sit next to these kids any more than anyone else does, but I’m sure you won’t really let me get away with that.”
The joke became a lot less funny when he said there was nothing he could do to fix it. And even less funny when his supervisor told me the same thing. Get on the plane, they advised me, and maybe some generous passenger will be willing to swap seats with you.
Hot tip, US Airways: Wrong Answer. You assigned my toddler and my kindergartner seats in row 26 and put me in row 5. That is your problem to solve, not your problem to dump on the dude in seat 26D.
If you’re not worried about what those transportation security folks will see when you walk through an airport full body scanner, that’s fine. But British authorities are warning the scanners created “indecent” photos of children.
That’s right – they’re catching nekkid pictures of your kids when they toddle through the screening center on the way to Disney Land. (Possibly while having their Play-Doh taken from them.) Continue reading »
Let me say that I make a conscious effort to eschew violence as much as possible — just as some ex-smokers are almost rabid in their condemnation of smoking, so too am I perhaps overly anti-violence. That said, I think that, had I been in Nic’s shoes, there would have been blood spilled at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport the other day. Certainly, the possibly-perverted old man who took her son Jackson away from her and out of her sight to “inspect” him would have been, shall we say, damaged.
Continue reading »
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