When It Costs Double to Let Your 12-Year-Old Fly Alone
$25 for nonstop flights
$50 for connecting flights
COST FOR UNACCOMPANIED
MINOR TICKET, EACH WAY*
Alaska/Virgin America
$25 for nonstop flights, $50 for connecting flights
“We look at it every year and evaluate the costs of the service versus our costs to implement
and manage it, and for the time being we’re satisfied,” said Fred Taylor Jr., Southwest’s liaison to the federal Department of Transportation’s aviation consumer protection division.
Even Southwest, which charges $50 each way for unaccompanied minors (required for children 5 through 11)
and is historically quite careful about costs, could not provide an itemized breakdown of unit costs or profitability.
Those $150 fees are not minute, however, if your divorce means
that you’re suddenly paying for two homes instead of one, and one child or more have to travel by air between homes on school vacations.
Airline fee outrage is a consumer trope, but it is rare
that a single fee can double your cost and rarer still when the rules seem to reflect a fundamental disagreement about child development and risk.
