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A minor traveling with aunt and family

Smallone
Explorer C

Hi! My family will be going on a cruise out of LA. After the cruise, my son(8 years-old)  will continue on with my sister and her family to Dallas. Now her family has purchased their tickets and paid for early check in. I paid for my son ticket with his travel credit and link their confirmation to his so he is not registered as a unaccompanied minor. Now the question is, do I need to purchase early check in for him to guarantee that he will board with them?

3 REPLIES 3

Re: A minor traveling with aunt and family

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A
Solution

This is a tricky one.  At this point there's no way to guarantee they all have consecutive boarding positions.  I do think since everyone else has EarlyBird and an 8 year old is not going to remember to check-in 24 hours prior to departure, or perhaps can't while on the cruise, I would suggest you purchase EarlyBird just so the child gets checked in automatically.  It's likely his boarding position will be a higher number than the family so the question then is how does everyone sit together.  If there are multiple adults, you could have one adult board with the 8 year old while everyone else boards in their better/lower boarding positions.  Those people that go ahead would need to save 2 seats (one for adult and one for 8 year old).  Saving 2 middle seats in the back two-thirds of the plane should not be that difficult.  That's my suggestion, hopefully it works out for you all.

 

--TheMiddleSeat

Re: A minor traveling with aunt and family

Smallone
Explorer C

That make sense,  thank you. I did forget that we cannot check in for the flight while on the boat so I will book him the early check in. It is two adults so one can be with him and one with the other kid. 

Re: A minor traveling with aunt and family

DancingDavidE
Aviator A

@Smallone wrote:

Hi! My family will be going on a cruise out of LA. After the cruise, my son(8 years-old)  will continue on with my sister and her family to Dallas. Now her family has purchased their tickets and paid for early check in. I paid for my son ticket with his travel credit and link their confirmation to his so he is not registered as a unaccompanied minor. Now the question is, do I need to purchase early check in for him to guarantee that he will board with them?


If you have four or five adults all in a row, and one kid that has a later position, you can probably have your son line up with them all in line especially if they all have EBCI and he will also have it, hopefully not too far behind.

 

The numbering gets a little loose when people just get more or less in their position so I wouldn't worry about +/- five positions difference in position.

 

The operations agent might bounce someone back in line if they are not in the right boarding group though, or I saw someone with a high A-number try to board with their A-1 companion and that didn't fly.

 

But if they all have B1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and he's standing with them at B10 or B15 it's probably fine.

 

If not do as @TheMiddleSeat  suggested and have one adult hang back with him until his position while the others hold spots for the two of them.

 

 

Home airport MDW, frequent visitor to MCO to see the mouse.