Kids

That first flight and that screaming baby

Kids, Kids travel, ,

My Alaska Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Seattle Tuesday afternoon provided a great refresher course on what’s great – and what’s not – about modern day air travel.

The great part: the people you end up talking to.

The not so great part: crying babies.

On this very full flight there was one inconsolable child who cried and screamed pretty much the entire flight. I was sitting a row behind the family and I could see that they were trying to remain calm and solve the problem, but nothing seemed to work.

I thought I was a hero there for a second when the crying stopped after I passed the little girl the frog-shaped flashlight I travel with. But after a few seconds, she went right back to weeping and everyone on the plane went back to rolling their eyes and plugging their ears.

That’s the not so great part.

The great part: meeting people who aren’t bored (yet) with flying.

In my row, there was a 15 year-old girl going home to Seattle who apologized for making me and Mr. Middle Seat get up so she could take her seat by the window. She told us she’d insisted her mother get her that seat because she was nervous about flying alone.

Mr. Middle Seat chatted her up during the flight and as we all got up to leave he asked her if she was still nervous. She was, she admitted, because now she was afraid she wouldn’t find her mother in the airport.

I offered to walk out with her and on the way she told me that on the first leg of the trip, she couldn’t find her friend for at least a half hour when she landed in Las Vegas.

After asking assorted – unhelpful – people for help, she ended up crying and calling her mother, who said “Do I have to fly to Las Vegas to get you?”

So we walked off the plane together, down the concourse, down two sets of escalators, past the baggage carousels and out to the curb. A second-nature trek for me, but definitely daunting and confusing when seen through the eyes of a newbie traveler.

My new buddy called her mom, who said she’d be pulling up momentarily. And I said good-bye to what I hope is now a more confident traveler already planning her next great adventure.

Jet Blue giving free books to kids

Contests, Kids, , ,

JetBlue and PBS KIDS are back with the Soar with Reading program.

 

The program makes literacy-based games and activities available to everyone (here’s a link to download a fun, free booklet) and donates thousands of books to kids who need them.

For each title of a favorite kid’s book you share, JetBlue will donate an age-appropriate book to a child in need (up toe $200,000 worth of books). Your suggestion also earns you an entry into a contest for two round-trip plane tickets and $2,000 worth of hotel vouchers, an iPad and a collection of books, or a PBS Kids prize pack.

Here’s page from the activity book, which should also be available on JetBlue flights

Gatwick treats old and young travelers; Dulles doles out cake

Contests, family travel, Kids, Kids travel, Travel tips, , ,

The search for the UK’s oldest traveler is winding down at Gatwick Airport.

Citing researching that shows 56% of O.A.Ts (Old Age Travelers) over 70 are traveling more often than they did when they were younger and a “staggering” 61% of those aged 85 and over are out on the road more as well, Gatwick airport has been trying to find the oldest “holidaymaker” and give them a trip for two to Las Vegas on British Airways and three nights at the 5-star Vdara Hotel and Spa.

The deadline is June 29, 2012. Rules and details here.

Gatwick Airport also has something for very young travelers.

As part of its free audiobook download program, the airport is offering recordings of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Three Little Pigs, the Ugly Ducking, Sleeping Beauty, the Three Billy Goats Gruff, the Princess and the Pea, Rumpelstiltskin, the Tortoise and the Hare, Puss in Boots and Little Red Riding Hood. You can download the stories at the airport or give a listen on SoundCloud here.

They do it at theme parks so why not at airports?

Earlier this month the 500 millionth passenger at Washington’s Dulles International Airport was surprised with soda, cake and cupcakes and given a Dulles Airport swagbag with a $50 gift card from Shop Dulles Airport.

To the moon or to the center of the earth

Fun Stuff, Kids, Kids travel, , , , ,

I’m sure I’ll have to update this come Sunday morning, but long before April 1, 2012 rolled around in my time zone, I made a few April Fools’ Day sightings.

From the Republic of Vanuatu comes word that Richard Branson has launched “Virgin Volacanic” in order to take travelers to the center of the earth

“Using patented carbon-carbon materials pioneered for deep space exploration, Virgin is proud to announce a revolutionary new vehicle, VVS1, which will be capable of plunging three people into the molten lava core of an active volcano.”

First up (or should I say down) is Etna – Sicily, Italy, followed by:
• Stromboli – Aeolian Islands
• Yasur – Republic of Vanuatu
• Ambrym – Republic of Vanuatu
• Tinakula – Solomon Islands

The first trips are scheduled for 2015. More details here.

Also, we have news from WestJet about a kids-free flying experience:

Details of Kargo Kids, including booking information and a simple, easy-to-understand demonstration video, is available on the WestJet website

Air New Zealand announced “STRAIGHTUP Fares” for those willing to fly while standing in the aisle holding onto a hand bar.

And Spirit Airlines, ever the prankster, announced $9 (each way) flights to the moon.

Tracking a toddler’s airport pat-down

Air Travel, Airports, Kids, Kids travel, Security, ,

I spent much of Monday morning trying to track down the parent who posted the video (below) of a 3 year-old in a wheelchair getting a very thorough pat-down at an airport security checkpoint.

It turned out the video was shot in 2010 and had been posted on YouTube over the weekend. But that didn’t stop it from going viral.

Here’s my story about the video – and the TSA’s response – that posted on msnbc.com.

A video shot in 2010 showing a 3-year-old boy receiving a pat-down from a TSA agent went viral today. The toddler was wearing a cast and sitting in a wheelchair.

In an annotated videotape of the incident posted March 17 on YouTube, the father is heard reassuring his son, whom he calls “Rocco,” while a TSA officer is seen patting down the squirming boy and taking swabs of the chair and the cast. After asking the parents to lift the boy’s shirt and offering them the option of going to a private screening area, the officer is also shown swabbing the boy’s back.

The video has been viewed more than 400,000 times. [updated]

Before conducting the check at the Chicago Midway Airport, the TSA officer tries to reassure the boy by asking what he likes — “Tigers? Animals?” — and then asks the boy to sit up. During the inspection he also tells the parents what he is doing and tells Rocco that he’s a good boy.

Comments added to the video by his father, said, “I was told I could NOT touch him or come near him during this process. Instead we had to pretend this was ‘OK’ so he didn’t panic.”

Reached Monday morning,  the boy’s father, Matt DuBiel, said the video was made in spring 2010 during a family trip to Disney World.

“We had a baby five weeks ago, and I was looking at some old family videos on Saturday night, and I got incensed and emotional watching it.”

DuBiel says he posted it on YouTube to share it with family members who have heard him talk about the incident but who hadn’t seen the video.

Noting that the incident took place more than a year ago, TSA, in a statement, said: “Due to the fact that this passenger was traveling in a wheelchair and had a cast he would have been unable to pass through the walk-through metal detector or imaging technology and therefore received alternative screening, a pat-down and use of explosives trace detection.”

“It doesn’t matter when it was,” said DuBiel. “That’s the TSA and that is my son. And he is wearing a body cast. The TSA agent did the best he could with a ridiculous situation, but someone should have stepped in and said, ‘That’s enough.’ ” He said he didn’t make a fuss at the time because he was worried about getting the whole family through security. The family was traveling to Disney World.

“At the time, they didn’t  have the rules in place for children that they have now. But, regardless of the new or old rules, my position is that it’s unacceptable to treat a toddler this way.”

Last fall, the TSA revised its rules for children 12 and under, saying they no longer have to remove their shoes at security checkpoints. The agency’s policy for Children with Disabilities states that “if your child is unable to walk or stand, the Security Officer will conduct a pat-down search of your child while he/she remains in their mobility aid, as well as a visual and physical inspection of their equipment.”

“While recognizing that terrorists are willing to manipulate societal norms to evade detection, our officers continue to work with parents to ensure a respectful screening process for the entire family at the checkpoint,” TSA said Monday.

 

Nine-year-old girl at center of Southwest mix-up

Air Travel, Kids, Kids travel, ,

Southwest Airlines is apologizing to a Clarksville, Tenn., family and investigating how a 9-year-old girl flying as an unaccompanied minor from Nashville to New York on Tuesday ended up re-routed and delayed for five hours without the airline notifying the family.

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)

Souvenir Sunday: Junior Wings

Air Travel, Airlines, family travel, Fun Stuff, Kids, Kids travel, Souvenir Sunday, Souvenirs, ,

Each Sunday StuckatTheAirport.com takes a look at the souvenirs you can get when you’re stuck at the airport.

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’s summer reading program

Air Travel, Kids, Kids travel, , , ,

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.

Aviation-themed waterpark opens in Oregon

Airlines, aviation, Entertainment, Fun Stuff, Kids, , ,

Wings and Waves Waterpark

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.

Wings and Waves Waterpark

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.

Wings and Waves water park

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.

Pick giant blueberries at Stockholm Arlanda Airport

Airports, Entertainment, Exhibits, family travel, Fun Stuff, Kids, , ,

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.