When Monica Gilliam put her 12-year-old daughter on a plane to go visit her dad, the last thing she expected was to get a call several hours later informing her that her daughter was missing. The tween was flying as an unaccompanied minor, a designation that is supposed to ensure kids flying solo are safeguarded until they reach their destination, but the Tennessee mom says that certainly wasn’t the case during her daughter’s trip. Now, she’s warning other parents to think twice before sending kids on flights alone.
“This morning I put my daughter on an American Airlines flight from Chattanooga to Miami to go see her dad,” the mom recounts in a viral post on TikTok. “If you’re not familiar with the unaccompanied minor flights, they have to wear a necklace that says they’re an unaccompanied minor. It’s got all their information, their boarding pass [and] the information of the parent picking them up so they can verify that the person picking them up is who is supposed to be there.”
Gilliam expected her daughter to arrive in Miami and be guided by flight attendants or airline employees to meet her dad. Instead, she says, she got a troubling phone call almost an hour after her daughter’s flight landed. “It was the manager in Miami, and he says, ‘Your child is missing. We’ve shut down the terminal. We don’t know where she is,'” Gilliam says.
Gilliam claims her daughter was waved off the flight by staff as soon as the plane landed and left to wander the airport alone. “The flight attendant said ‘bye,’ and she didn’t know what to do so she kept walking,” the mom says. “She finally gets ahold of her dad, who is trying to get a gate pass. He thought the best thing to do was to stay in one spot and try to talk her through the signs to get her to him as safely as possible. So she’s going through the airport with that billboard on her that she’s an unaccompanied minor, in one of the largest human trafficking hubs in the country.”
Gilliam’s daughter eventually reached her dad, but the mom claims no one from the airline knew where her daughter was or verified that she was safe before she left. “On the way out, not one employee stopped her to see if she had an adult,” Gilliam says. “Even the TSA security agent, before she left the secured area and went into baggage claim, didn’t stop her either.”
Who’s responsible for unaccompanied minors on planes?
Many people were floored by Gilliam’s account of what happened to her daughter. Her video sparked a major debate about the safety of letting kids fly alone and who bears responsibility when things go wrong.
“I am a former flight attendant,” one person says in the comments on TikTok. “We had to walk the child to the parent and verify ID before releasing the child. [This is] definitely unacceptable.”
“My daughter has been flying alone since she was six so the way my heart dropped,” another person adds. “This is completely unacceptable.”
But others weren’t so understanding. Some said the girl’s father should never have asked her to walk through the airport alone while others questioned the idea of putting kids on a plane by themselves at all.
“Don’t ever tell her to leave secured area,” one person writes. “She’s safer there. Dad needed to go and find her, not the other way around. Airline fail for sure.”
“No judgement, but this is the reason I would never put my child on a flight alone,” another person says. “Too many crazies in this world. Not to mention, airports and flying alone can be scary.”
What does it mean to fly as an unaccompanied minor?
Letting kids fly alone isn’t a new thing. Many airlines have established policies for helping unaccompanied minors fly safely, though the specific details vary by company. According to the American Airlines website, the airline charges a $150 unaccompanied service fee each way, in addition to the regular ticket price. In exchange, the website says unaccompanied kids ages 5-14 get:
- Early boarding to allow extra time to get settled and meet the flight attendants.
- Kids-only lounges in hub cities for flight connections.
- An airport escort to help children to the gate for flight connections.
- An airport escort to the authorized adult picking them up when they land.
In an official statement provided to NBC News, American Airlines says they are looking into Gilliam’s complaint and take safety matters seriously. For her part, Gilliam says she simply wants to ensure this doesn’t happen ever again.
“I don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” she says. “And if your child is flying an unaccompanied flight with American Airlines, then consider that. It’s not OK, and it shouldn’t happen.”
