Chloe Boyce is fine and will be getting a special patch from her junior Girl Scout troop to mark her adventure, but her mom, Elena Kerr, is upset.

“The flight arrived and my daughter didn’t get off,” Kerr told me. “Someone went on the plane to see if she was there and my sister called me and said, ‘Where’s Chloe?’ The Southwest guys told her there were no unaccompanied minors on that flight.”

Kerr had put Chloe on a flight in Nashville headed for New York’s LaGuardia Airport with scheduled stops in Columbus and Baltimore.

Southwest’s policy only allows unaccompanied children to be booked on itineraries that don’t include plane changes. Chloe’s flight, however, made an extra stop in Cleveland due to weather, and upon arriving in Baltimore she was rebooked on another flight to New York.

Unfortunately, no one from the airline called Kerr to inform her of the delay. The airline also did not contact Chloe’s aunt, who was waiting at the gate in New York.

Kerr said she started frantically calling Southwest and that it took more than an hour for the airline to locate Chloe and even longer to explain what happened.

“At BWI, the flight attendant took her off the plane, walked her to Hudson News to get her a drink and some snacks and the pilot bought her dinner,” Kerr told me. “But while she was there no could tell us where she was.”

Kerr said her family is a military family that has spent time living in Alaska and that she understands delays. “We just don’t understand why we weren’t called, especially because the Southwest policy states that someone must be available to answer phone calls during the flight time in the event of a flight irregularity.”

Southwest Airlines has apologized to Kerr and refunded the cost of Chloe’s ticket.

“Our unaccompanied minor policy aims to minimize these kinds of situations … by only ticketing them on itineraries that don’t require an aircraft change,” said Southwest spokesperson Brad Hawkins via email.
“In this case, the unscheduled change of planes resulted in the connection, a delay and distress for the family which we certainly regret and have apologized for in our conversation with the family of our customer.”

Kerr is not convinced she should let Chloe fly alone again.

“We don’t trust Southwest,” said Kerr. ” I’m going to be driving the 17 hours to New York to get her.”

(A slightly different version of this story first appeared on msnbc.com)

This week, the souvenirs come from the sky, courtesy of Fly the Branded Skies, an airline-focused website that has a section devoted to the junior wings just about every airline used to hand out to young passengers.

Delta and a few other airlines still do hand out junior wings, but instead of metal the modern-day wings are plastic or, in some cases, merely a sticker.

JetBlue and PBS kids have rolled out a fun literacy program that will not only entertain kids, but help keep the cabin noise level in check.

The program has several elements, but here at StuckatTheAirport.com we’re most pleased to learn that kids on JetBlue flights this summer will receive a free activity kit with reading games, including this fun word find exercise.

Kids and their parents can also download a reading activity kit, create a summer reading list, log reading minutes and do other activities. And for every reader that registers on SoarwithReading.com, JetBlue will make a book donation to a child through First Book, up to 10,000 books.

Soar with Reading will also be giving $10,000 worth of children’s books to one community’s library. Another library will receive $2,500 worth of books and five other libraries will receive $500 worth of books, courtesy of Random House Children’s Books and JetBlue. You can nominate a library and, as a reward, be entered to win a vacation package to the Bahamas.

So it’s win-win-win all around.

For Washington Journey Online, I put together a story about the country’s newest and perhaps most unusual waterpark, which opened June 6, 2011 on the grounds of the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

The museum is best known for being the home of the giant Howard Hughes HK-1 “Spruce Goose,” which made a short, single flight back in November, 1947, as well as a wide variety of spacecraft, helicopters and military, commercial and personal aircraft. An extensive firearms collection, historical artifacts, an IMAX 3D theater and many educational exhibits are also on-site.

So while it may seem strange that an aviation museum would build its own water park, it makes perfect sense that an aviation-themed water park is what got built.

And the aviation-theme is impossible to miss: the new Wings and Waves Waterpark has as its centerpiece a Boeing 747-100 airplane mounted on the roof of a 60-foot tall building.
Inside the building, there are colorful, scream-inducing slides, a giant wave pool, a water vortex and a multi-level play structure with slides, water guns, spouts and buckets and a helicopter that hovers overhead and occasionally dumps 300 gallons of water on those below. The park even has its own museum: the H2O Museum has more than two dozen interactive exhibits and explains concepts such as Bernoulli’s Principle, the water cycle and jet propulsion.

Splashdown Harbor, the 91,000 wave pool, sits in the center of the waterpark and offers swimmers eight different wave motions as well as depth charges and bubblers. A 20-foot wide high-resolution video screen by the pool is slated to show everything from NASA splashdown videos to feature films during the park’s planned “Dive-in” movies events.

And, then, of course, there are the rides. The park has 10 water slides, with four main slides coming directly out of the belly of the rooftop airplane. The yellow Sonic Boom slide, with its open top, is designed for novice riders. The green Nose Dive is just that: a two-person inner-tube ride that starts with a big drop and winds its way to the pool. The fully-enclosed blue Tail Spin speeds riders through a series of tight, figure-eight, high banking curves. And then there’s the Mach 1: described as a “test your mettle ride,” this high-speed, enclosed-body slide requires riders to descend 60 vertical feet on their backs, with their arms and legs crossed.

Sound like fun? Here are the details:

The Evergreen Wings and Waves Waterpark sits just west of the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, which is 3.5 miles southeast of McMinnville, Oregon, on Highway 18. It’s about an hour from Portland and 40 minutes from Salem.

A play area based on the stories and illustrations of noted Swedish children’s books author Elsa Beskow has opened at Stockholm Arlanda Airport.

A collaboration between a local children’s museum (Junibacken) and the airport, the play area invites kids to ride on a field mouse, pick giant blueberries, slide down a giant mushroom and interact with a wide variety of characters and scenes from the books. There’s also a corner for watching movies, reading and playing games.

Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with Beskow’s stories. You can get an idea of her magic by just skimming the titles, which include Hat Cottage (1930), Children of the Forest (1910), Peter in Blueberry Land (1901), Olle’s Ski Trip (1907) and The Sun Egg (1932), or sitting down and reading one of her books, which will be stocked at the play area in a variety of languages.

Here’s more on Elsa:

Elsa Beskow was a master at depicting Swedish nature, which comprises a key element in all her work. Her books are widely published in other languages, and she is considered the author who introduced Swedish children’s books to the rest of the world. Peter in Blueberry Land was the first book to be translated, into German in 1903, into Danish in 1912, and into English in 1931. Today Elsa Beskow’s books have been translated into 19 languages.

It’s Souvenir Sunday at StuckatTheAirport.com. That’s the day we take a look at the fun, inexpensive and “of” the city souvenirs you can pick up when you’ve got time to spend at an airport.

This week’s finds were spotted in the shops at Delta Air Lines’ Terminal 3 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport – JFK.

And, while they’re not “of” New York City, these cute kitty-bunnies caught my eye.

If you find a great souvenir next time you’re Stuck at the Airport, please take a moment to snap a photo, jot down some notes (price, why you love it, etc.) and send it along.

If your souvenir is featured on Souvenir Sunday, I’ll send you a special travel souvenir.

Finished shopping? If you’re in Terminal 3 at JFK, be sure to visit the iPad village.

Julie McKinney -famiily and friends at Orlando Airport

I had way too much fun gathering stories, drawings and photos for this story about first flights that appeared on msnbc.com today.  I know there are lots more great stories – and first flight souvenirs – out there, so after you read these stories, please send along your own.

Do you remember your first airplane ride?

Julie McKinney does. No doubt other passengers on that flight do too.

It was 1992 and she was “that” kid: the excited 5-year old on her first airplane ride and headed to Disney World. “I was the one singing ‘M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E’ the entire flight from Pittsburgh to Orlando,” said McKinney.

Now 23, McKinney remembers other passengers singing along. “The singing continued until the end of the flight and I don’t remember anyone getting upset. I think of this now every time I fly and can’t imagine how I’d react to a singing child sitting in front of me.”

Roller coasters, dolphins and cotton balls

Whether it was 50 years ago or just last week, your first airplane ride, like your first kiss, can leave a lasting impression and have an impact on what sort of traveler you become.

Jeff Pecor was also Disney World-bound on his first airplane ride, at age 8, in the early 1980s. Now on staff at Yapta, an airfare and hotel price tracking site, Pecor remembers it being “so cool that they served food and they gave you plastic pilot wings. And everyone was so nice.”

Unforgettable as well: “That first roller-coaster feeling that hits your stomach when the plane sometimes drops suddenly during turbulence. That sensation still gets me today, but it’s altogether different when you’re not expecting the plane to do that.”

Raymond Kollau, who today tracks airline news for airlinetrends.com, first boarded a plane when he was 16, in the summer of 1986. “From the air, the waves in the Mediterranean looked like dolphins,” said Kollau, “And I remember telling my sister she couldn’t walk in the aisle because it would make the plane lean forwards or backwards.”

Snow Wonderland

To Boston-based artist Annie Silverman, the world outside the airplane window on her first flight, in 1957, looked like a “snow wonderland.” She even documented the scene in an autobiography she wrote and illustrated in her 4^th grade class that year. “It was Christmas vacation and we were all dressed up,” said Silverman, “I remember that the clouds looked like giant cotton balls, the sky was so blue and there was the constant hum of the motor.”
Gum balls, not cotton balls welcomed Thomas Sawyer on his first flight. Sawyer, the bladder cancer survivor recently in the news for his experience with a botched airport pat-down, took his first flight as a young newlywed with his wife, Sherry. At the end of that flight, he realized he’d been sitting on a wad of gum. “The very good looking stewardess attempted to remove it and my wife finally said to her, ‘I think I will take care of that, thank-you.’ She obviously didn’t want this young lady touching my butt. We have laughed about it for 41 years,” said Sawyer.

There was probably no laughing when Orville and Wilbur Wright made those historic first, heavier-than-air powered flights on December 17, 1903. The weather and the wind were bad that day and, according to Peter Jakab, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs at the National and Space Museum, “Years later Orville said that had they known then what they learned later, they would never have made that test flight under those conditions.”

Still, in preparing for that first flight Orville wrote in his diary, “…Isn’t it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years just so we can discover them!!”

Baby’s first flight

Cathy Raines first discovered flying on January 10^th, 1955, when she was just nine weeks old. She’s flown to 45 countries since then. And while she doesn’t remember that first flight, she’s proud to have the Sky Cradle Club certificate issued that day by the American Airlines crew. “There’s a drawing of a baby in a diaper astride a jet plane and it’s signed by two stewardesses, the captain and others,” said Raines.

Although Delta Air Lines recently brought back the tradition of handing out plastic wings to kids and polite adults, most airlines did away with tangible souvenirs such as First Flight certificates and wings as a cost-saving step after 9/11.

Mary Winking at John Wayne Airport - 1985

That disappoints American Airlines flight attendant Mary Winking, who has fond memories of her first flight when she was nine years old. “The flight attendants were very attentive and let me help hand out the honey roasted peanuts. I got my first pair of wings that day and still have them with other keepsakes from that first trip to California.”

“I still wish we had the stick-on wings to give out to children and/or a certificate to present to them like we used to,” says Kelly Vrajitoru, also an American Airlines flight attendant. She remembers that on her first flight, at five years old, she held tight to her mother’s hand “feeling my stomach lift as we took off.”

Today, Vrajitoru tries to pay extra attention to first-time flyers, especially kids. “I always offer to have a parent take a picture of their kid with the Captain before take-off or on landing, or to have them sit in the cockpit to take a closer look at all the gears and instruments. I know it makes a special and lasting impression.”

The passenger of the future

Jacob Whitecotton, now four years old, got some of that special attention when he took his first flight from Oklahoma to Orlando at age three. For the flight, Jake dressed up in a white shirt, a tie and the kid-sized American Airlines pilot cap his mom bought for him at an airport gift shop.  “It was a blast. He was going through the airport pulling a little rolling suitcase and he looked just like a tiny pilot,” said Jake’s mom, Andrea Whitecotton.

Once on the plane, Jacob got the royal treatment. A flight attendant produced a set of wings from a secret stash he’d squirreled away. Flight attendants and other travelers took pictures. One passenger gave Jake a disposable camera so he could document his flight.

What does Jake remember?  “I got to go in the cockpit and they let me drive the plane.”

What do you remember about your first flight? Please share your memories below.

[This story first appeared on msnbc.com]

A California family booted from a United Airlines flight last week in a dispute over an infant carrier raises the question: How do parents choose the correct airline seat for their baby?

“Parents may be looking for a sticker that says ‘FAA approved,’ but the label on an approved restraint will only say, ‘This restraint is certified for use in motor vehicles and aircraft.’ So it’s easy for parents to get confused,” said family travel expert Anya Clowers of JetwithKids.com.

The Federal Aviation Administration allows children ages two and under to fly unrestrained on an airplane if seated on an adult’s lap. But the agency agrees with the National Transportation Safety Board, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups that children are safer when restrained in their own seats.

Melissa Bradley said she purchased a separate seat for her 1-year-old daughter and boarded a United flight on Jan. 26 with an FAA-approved infant carrier. But Bradley discovered that her child’s assigned seat was too narrow to accommodate the carrier. She mentioned the problem to a flight attendant, but ultimately was removed from the plane for being disruptive and rebooked on a later flight.

FAA regulations state that if an approved child-restraint system (CRS) doesn’t fit in an airplane seat, the airline must “accommodate the CRS in another seat in the same class of service.”

“There’s not a lot of ambiguity in that statement,” said NTSB Chairman Deborah Hermann.

Choosing the right seat
But buying the right seat can be tricky. Some child-restraint systems are approved for use in motor vehicles but not for airplanes. The current harness-style Child Aviation Restraint System (CARES) is approved for use on airplanes but not in cars.

To add to the confusion, the FAA doesn’t publish a list of approved makes and models of child-restraint systems. For that, parents must search family travel and company websites that may or may not be inclusive or up-to-date. Then they must make sure the child-restraint system they choose has that FAA certification label.

JetwithKids.com lists and reviews some FAA-approved child seats, but Clowers said she is unaware of any site that has an all-inclusive list.

Once parents have chosen an FAA-approved child-restraint system, they must then learn how to use that seat and seek an airplane seat assignment that matches their needs.

In December, the FAA posted an instructional video on its website showing how to properly install a child-restraint system on a plane. When it comes to getting a seat assignment, though, guidelines and reservation systems can cause confusion. For example, a child-restraint system should be put in a window seat, so that it doesn’t block the emergency exit path for other passengers. Approved child carriers cannot be used in, or in front of, exit row seats. And although bulkhead seats and premium seats offer extra inches, those seats are not always available and sometimes require extra fees.

The type of aircraft also can affect fit, said FAA spokesperson Alison Duquette. “Not all child safety seats fit, but the seats that are approved should fit.”

But Sarah Tilton, child passenger safety advocate at car seat manufacturer Britax, warns that “compatibility issues between car seats (rear or forward facing) and aircraft seats could increase as we see airlines decreasing the leg room to accommodate more passengers in the cabin. This decreasing of leg room will limit the space to install a car seat rear-facing.”

Stay calm
As Bradley and some other parents have discovered, even when parents call ahead to alert an airline that a ticketed passenger will be using a child-restraint system, sometimes seats are too small to allow proper installation.

“Airlines are required to accommodate the CRS in the same class of service,” said Clowers. “Do not give in and check the seat. Risking a child’s safety is not the answer. Speak with a supervisor and remain calm.”

“Remaining calm can be the tough part,” said Dr. Marilyn J. Bull, co-medical director of a program that studies child seat safety at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Ind. “It’s hard enough to fly with young children and then add hassles with seats on top of that. Many times parents don’t know the things they should ask or do.”

Airline gate agents and crew members sometimes don’t seem to know what to do either.

Some parents have been told incorrectly that they must check an FAA-approved carrier and travel with their child on their lap. And Bull recently sat a row ahead of a mother who had dutifully strapped her two children into non-FAA-approved booster seats in preparation for a flight. “The flight attendant kept telling the mother that she had to take her children out of those booster seats, but couldn’t explain to the mother why.”

“Perhaps the bigger issue here is that the airlines don’t appear to know the FAA regulations, and the flight attendants don’t appear to be concerned with getting to know them,” said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org. “Our babies deserve better.”

But Sara Keagle, a flight attendant who writes the Flying Pinto blog, takes issue with the implication that flight attendants don’t know FAA regulations. “I have never been on a flight where we had to have a car seat removed,” she said. “I believe flight attendants are up to speed on the rules.”

Still, NTSB chairman Hermann said she’d like to see better information conveyed to flight crews about what to do when an FAA-approved child restraint seat doesn’t fit in its assigned airline seat.

“This is an issue that parents should not have to argue with flight attendants about when they’re taking their baby on a trip,” she said. “Parents should not be penalized for doing the right thing.”

Resources for flying with babies

• Before you go, read the FAA’s “Childproof your flight” brochure.

• Watch the FAA’s video on how to properly install a child-restraint system in an airplane seat.

• To report problems regarding the use of an FAA-approved child-restraint system on a flight to your airline’s customer service department, the Aviation Consumer Protection Division at the U.S. Department of Transportation at (202) 366-2220 and to the FAA hotline at 866-TELL-FAA.

Traveling with baby? Get the right airplane seat originally appeared on msnbc.com

You have stuff to do.  Deadlines.  Work someone will pay you for if you just, you know, do it.

So you pour a cup of coffee and sit down at the computer.

But then, dang, the Internet happens.

Here’s a bit of what got me distracted today.

Air New Zealand posted time-lapse video footage of its first new domestic A320 being built and painted with all black livery.

The paint job has something to do with the All Blacks rugby team, so of course I had to visit that site and then the Small Blacks site as well.

As long as I was visiting the Air New Zealand site, I had to check in on what that wild and crazy furry creature, Rico, was up to. I found this reel of bloopers.

A quick check of email and Twitter sent me off in new directions.

Florida’s Dali Museum was opening in its snazzy new building in St. Petersburg, FL. And as someone who first came upon that museum collection, by accident, when it shared space with a factory in Cleveland, Ohio, I of course had to visit.

While there, I came across this clip of Salvador Dali as a guest on the old TV show, What’s My Line?

Then, of course, it was time to check email and Twitter and catch up on my RSS feed.

A blog post by the folks at the  Smithsonian Air and Space Museum - 5 Cool Things at the Udvar-Hazy Center You May Have Missed – caught my eye because the Udvar-Hazy Center is just down the road Dulles International Airport.

And then I really got tangled up in the web. A comment on the museum blog post mentioned Anita, “the spider from Skylab.”  I didn’t know about Anita so had to follow that thread.

It turns out that Anita and a companion spider, Arabella, were part of an experiment flown on Skylab, a space station launched in May 1973.

According the Smithsonian website:

Scientists and students interested in the growth, development, behavior, and adaptation of organisms in weightlessness provided a variety of biology experiments for flight in the orbital research laboratory. A common Cross spider, “Anita” participated in a web formation experiment suggested by a high school student. The experiment was carried out on the Skylab 3 mission, which lasted 59 days from July 28-September 25, 1973. Astronauts Alan Bean, Jack Lousma, and Owen Garriott carried out the scientific research in space, reported the results, and returned this specimen at the end of their mission. NASA then sent Anita, a companion spider “Arabella,” and the experiment equipment to the Museum.

Anita is on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Arabella is in storage.

Although all elves must undergo enhanced pat-downs at airports, the NORAD Santa Tracker is reporting that Santa has been able to fly around the world with a sleigh full of wrapped packages without being hassled.

Whether or not you believe in Santa, NORAD’s Santa-tracking story is a sweet one. It dates back to 1955, when NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command) was CONAD, the Continental Air Defense Command

According to the NORAD website:

The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD  Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.” The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.

NORAD’s website has an audio clip of Shoup describing that first call.