The child in this case being a young woman, who will have just turned sixteen at the time of the flight, and who will be flying from Seattle, WA to Japan. She’s only flown 3-4 times in her entire, admittedly short life, and has never flown internationally before. I can imagine about a million possible ways for this situation to go awry, and at the point I’m wondering if I’m obsessing unfairly over the difficulty of this venture, turning the girl into some kind of incapable slackwit, or if it really is as fraught with danger as I’m imagining it to be.
Here are my two major concerns:
That she’ll miss a connecting flight at LAX. That place has always been a headache for me, but I’m scatter-brained and easily distracted, and whenever I’ve passed through there, it’s been early in the morning and during major construction. How much of this will pose a barrier for an intelligent sixteen year old, I’m not sure.
That having landed in Tokyo, and finding it necessary to switch from Narita (an international airport where she’ll likely be landing) to Haneda (from which she’ll be making a domestic connecting flight), will get lost. She’ll have to take the train between airports – which okay, no big deal, since I’d be more than happy to book a flight and meet her at Narita and accompany her the rest of the way. So it’s not so much of a problem, I think
I’m worried, of course, that I’ll have to fly into Seattle from Tokyo, and then fly all the way back with her, which, holy shit, would that be unpleasant and expensive.
So are there any kind of resources for this type of stuff? Does anybody have any recommendations or suggestions? Maybe even a little commiseration?
Well, first of all, I don’t think you’ll be able to find a big enough slingshot. At most she’ll make it a few hundred yards, let alone across the whole world.
Seriously though, I think you’re worrying too much. Tokyo at least is idiot-proof. And you said she’s intelligent, so there you go.
I flew, although not internationally, alone multiple times at 15 & 16. No problems at all. At 16, she should be mature enough to handle it, in my opinion.
I flew on my own at ten and again at fifteen to India and back. Now at ten I had airline help, but I still was able to figure out most of it, and at fifteen, I had no help at all.
You know how responsible she is, but I was a fairly scatter brained young teen and I made it all right - on Pan Am, when it was going downhill. On the way back, we flew out of India, and then the flight turned around 3 hours later and went back. Damaged plane. I didn’t know the airport would put you up and ended up stranded at the airport for a short time until I could get in touch with my uncle. No biggie, though it was scary then.
Come up with a list of things that could go wrong and go over them with her. Make her keep her itinerary and stuff close by. Tell her to ask for help; I’ve never had a problem with people helping me.
By then I had already flown many times alone, so the fear was pretty low, but it really isn’t that fraught with danger, as you say. Tell her to be alert, and to be wary, and never leave her stuff alone, but she’ll probably be fine. The nice thing about airports these days is only flying people are allowed in, so most of the people are just harried travelers just like her, and not looking to steal.
Prepare her for it and she’ll be fine. I would advise a little longer connection times to reduce stress and very little carryon so she’s got less to worry about. Also, make sure whatever bag she does have has a dedicated pocket for her boarding pass, passport and any other important documents. You don’t want anything else in that spot so that the risk of losing those documents is reduced.
There’s all these people wearing obvious uniforms whose job it is to help travelers of all ages get on the right plane. I wouldn’t hesitate to let most 16 year olds make this trip.
Check to see if the arriving flight and the departing flight are leaving from different terminals. Also, how much time between flights? If you are really worried about it, airlines offer an unaccompanied minor service that will have someone escort the child from one airplane to the next. United charges $100 for this, not sure about other airlines. But then you’ve have to deal with a 16 year old flipping out that you hired a babysitter for two hours because you didn’t trust her to walk a quarter mile on her own.
I’m not follow that last part – you are in Japan and you’re planning on traveling to Narita to pick her up, get her to Haneda, and travel with her to the final destination? Or are you in the US and thinking of traveling with her the whole trip? I don’t get it.
I’ve never gone from Narita to Haneda, but it seems clear that there are several options available. Taking trains in Japan is a little confusing at first (as you may know?) but there is always an English speaker available somewhere, especially at the Narita station. It looks like there is also a direct bus that costs 3,000 yen – it’s pretty damn hard to get lost on a bus. And they seem to run a couple times an hour, so if one is missed, so what?
But finally, you know the young woman best and you should know if she is generally an untrustworthy flake, or someone who can solve problems on her own. Set aside your worries about missed connections, language barriers, and the like, and just think about her as a person: is she the type to give up and start crying at the first moment someone isn’t holding her hand? Can she not wait to get out and have an adventure on her own? Does she know that if things get really problematic, she can ask for help, or even call you on her cell phone? My guess is that the answer to your question rests with those kinds of judgments on her maturity, rather than the logistical how-to’s of airport transfers.
