fttc

Well if the family handled it all by themselves with the delay, it's fine to see if any compensation is due.

However, as is, given the above and beyond support that Southwest provided, I will be totally embarrassed to ask for compensation if I were OP. You can't have it both ways. Extracting whatever you can from someone who just helped you (while they don't need to) seems to be a pretty low standard. Hopefully you see the issue in your thinking.

Kevin AA

I think the replies re crying "traumatized" teenage girl in the bathroom are very helpful.

People mature at different rates. I flew by myself at age 10 (with UM chaperone) and at age 16 by myself, both with a connection. It was quite fun, but I understand not every 16 year old is the same. However, this is definitely NOT a "traumatic" event. It's imperfect, aka real life.

My advice to the OP is: please do not cave and accompany your 16 year old on a plane back home. Giving in to that is no different than letting a screaming toddler get dessert at the restaurant. Kids need to be raised to be adults, not coddled, or they will never grow up.

We will be happy to help with advice re rebooking etc but we cannot parent your daughter. Only you can do that. I'm sure you want to see her be a grownup, not an overgrown toddler who falls to pieces during a 7 hour delay at a major airport. So it's her first flight that didn't go perfectly. It's okay. Let's stay calm and be realistic: there was no in-flight emergency, no diversion to a remote location, etc.

Let us know how the return trip goes, and welcome to Flyertalk.

storewanderer

Sounds to me like Southwest provided excellent service as they often do... the delay obviously something beyond the control of their ground crew, but the fact that national got in touch with the ground crew and found your daughter in the terminal is really quite impressive. Good luck getting that type of service from any other airline.

Let this be a rather painful, but also valuable in the context of future traveling, lesson for your daughter: flight delays happen. You have to be assertive and know what you are entitled to in the event of a delay and how to best go about resolving the situation in the most favorable manner for yourself. It is dog eat dog in the airport and the more experienced dogs tend to get home a lot faster than the less experienced ones. You have to be paying attention to what is going on when you are in the airport but also before you travel. Watch for that flight delay the morning of your flight or even the night before and if you see that one hour delay, you call and try to rebook. Or you go in knowing that it is delayed and who knows what will happen.

Personally, I would not have been ready to fly that distance by myself at age 16. I did not take an "alone" trip until I was 21 and even then it was a quick one a one hour flight... started easy.

Again I do think this is a situation that could prove very valuable for the future for your daughter to better understand how to handle issues at the airport. Even for a non-frequent traveler this is a valuable trait.

You can either play victim here or look at it as a learning experience for all parties involved. I think the learning experience approach is the better one to take as it will help you in the future. Playing victim will accomplish nothing.

As far as compensation requests go, seriously?

ursine1

Astounding.

Toshbaf

I agree in part, disagree in part.
She
A 16 year old should be able to travel alone and, with the cell phone, has potentially much more support than the pre-cell phone era.

An unpleasant experience, such as this one, could scare the teen for decades, making her fearful of air travel and resulting in her avoiding it. An optimal situation would be for her to have traveled before. Then around age 13, start to direct the family and take the lead in check in and planning, such as where to park the car, if the car would be used to the airport, booking the ticket, etc.

Maybe the next time, have the teen do it again but to call for consultation before crying. She could call and say "this is what happened and this is what I am going to do and what I'm going to say to the agent".

Kevin AA

If a 7 hour delay at a major airport with cell phone coverage causes one to be scared for decades, a visit to a psychiatrist is in order.

I am completely serious... an in-flight emergency would send someone like that into a state of shock that could be permanent.

I doubt the 16 year old in question has issues that serious; sounds like a fairly typical teenage girl who simply needs some guidance, that's all.

jeffandnicole

One thing not mentioned is how often the daughter has flown in the past - especially with her family. If she's a frequent flyer, chances are delays may have occurred. If she's only flown once or twice, I can see how delays like this would be quite nerve-wracking. But that's also a reason not to over-estimate one's skills in navigating a strange airport. I'm not a frequent flyer by any means, and amazingly have incurred very minor delays at most. The longest delay was actually one in which we were already on the plane on the tarmac. I've never had any cancelled flights to deal with or anything like that.

So, that all said, I'm also not going to go crying in a bathroom stall. For a 16 year old, a call home would've been the first natural reaction. Mom's first natural reaction should've been, get in line with everyone else and find out the various options. If the flight was simply delayed (and delayed again), there's not much that can be done, but just keep updated. Mom can keep an eye on things at home as well, or call Southwest, even on a 3-way conference call with the daughter. With mom on here wondering what compensation the daughter should receive, she's probably not very keen on airline travel herself.

In this month's backseat Southwest magazine is a story about a 6 year old that just hit his 300th flight! That kid could probably get around nearly any airport better than most of us. He would be someone that would probably have no problem stuck in an airport. But you have to know your kid.

pinniped

OK, maybe OT...but I've always thought this might be the *one* case where travel insurance might be worth it. Wouldn't travel insurance possibly get you to the first port of call in time to catch up with the boat?

Disclaimer: Never bought travel insurance, as my auto/homeowner's companies don't provide it and I'm not even 100% sure how it's regulated. Taken 1 cruise in my life, but decided to "self insure" by spending 2 days in the departure city prior to the cruise.

pinniped

That's kind of how my daughter has gotten familiar with how to travel: she's taken a couple trips with grandparents where she had to at least navigate the group through the travel day itself. (She's 14 now...she obviously did not buy the tickets.) So far, it's been reasonably easy stuff - fairly small connecting points like KEF or DUB. Next year the degree of difficulty goes up a notch: an itin with a PHL multi-terminal change followed by an LHR T3 to T5 change. We purposely selected 3 hour connections for both, more due to the velocity of the grandparents than my daughter's ability to navigate. (They're in that in-between state...slow-ish walkers, but not special-assistance travelers.)

When she's 15 she'll do her usual summer trips to visit family by herself. Domestic WN itins are old hat to her, and she could probably book those herself using my RR points. Still, I'd caution her against oddball routings like the one in this thread.

BearX220

This X 1000. The spectacle of all these hyper-experienced road warriors beating up on a 16-year-old newbie is very depressing. Her mom is not IMO angling to exploit this incident for free money. She was just asking what protocol might be for a kid traveler stuck on a long delay.

Neither you nor I at the age of 16 might have locked ourselves in a toilet stall, weeping, in a situation like this, but let's not be so judgy about others. I happen to have a 29-year-old relation with various issues for whom I organize travel occasionally -- she is absolutely not capable of making connecting flights or navigating strange airports, and she has to be seen off and picked up strictly at security checkpoints, lest she get lost. Nobody here knows what the OP's kid's issues may be.

Instead of heaping scorn on OP, this could have been a teaching moment for infrequent-flyer parents sending their kids off alone for the first time. But sadly the reception has been so scathing I doubt we will hear from her again.

jeffandnicole

Travel insurance is filled with technicalities. Would it cover you to get to the first port of call? Depends. Some only allow for medical issues. Some provide cancellation "for any reason". Would it apply to missing the boat? Eh, maybe, maybe not.

Last year, I was active in a Punta Cana forum, and people were leaving early due to a hurricane. Ultimately, most travel insurance companies paid out very little money. To put it generically: An airline flew you there and back. If you left early, and if the airlines announced they were cancelling flights, they would pay for the nights you missed. But if you were stuck inside the hotel all day, or evacuated to another location and didn't have the food and drink you expected, oh well. As the insurance companies saw it, it didn't matter what flight you wound up flying, you still flew.

So, to bring it back to this topic: An insurance company will probably say that you eventually got on a flight the same day you were to fly. Other compensation is available from the airlines, based on airline or federal guidelines.

CALlegacy

Travel insurance reimburses costs incurred to deal with something. I don't think they step in and help make arrangements in real time, do they? An exception might be medical evacuation. You can't really call your credit card company and ask them for help re-booking your trip or finding a hotel, can you?

pinniped

I'm not beating up on the 16-y.o. I'm definitely questioning the judgment of the adult who booked her on such an unnecessarily bad itinerary for her first solo trip.

The kid shouldn't have been anywhere near Baltimore that day, full stop. That's not the kid's fault.

Kevin AA

She has to connect somewhere. What's wrong with BWI?

jeffandnicole

Unless you booked thru the credit card first, in which some credit cards do have that service available to their cardholders. But even then I would imagine the insurance department is far removed from the concierge/booking service the credit card offers.