This. Is. Shocking. What if this were your 10 year old child?

http://m.nbcbayarea.com/nbcbayarea/p...tguid=tXP38n3H

If it was my 14 year old child, I'd thank them!

Wow is all I can say. We have sent out kids several times as "unaccompanied minors" all the way from FL to HI. Its a very nervous time for a parent. Last summer I did it with my son and had flight tracker on all the way. Knew the moment he arrived at each stop and he texted me when he arrived.

Heck, 99.99% of the time I think kids are safer that way than with their parents--even good parents, who might get distracted with doing something. I have no problem with a parent sending an unaccompanied minor on a flight, as they should be in the safest environment they are going to be in.

That's what makes this one so whack. Not just losing the kid, but how they treated the kid -- and the parents -- throughtout the ordeal. I kept reading the letter, and I kept thinking, "wow, that was bad, surely the story is about over--and then it continued with the next bad thing." Read like a real life horror story, for sure.

I will take the time in the next day or two to tell you our story.

My Mother had a yen to see Europe, but my Dad would not fly and neither of them wanted a long boat ride so Mom and a friend decided to go together, and Mom thought it would be a great idea to take our 10 year old Daughter with them for the 2 week excursion. It was a difficult decision for my Wife to finally relent and say yes. I was not too keen on the idea either but it was easier for me to say yes.

They flew off to London one day and called when they arrived. Daughter was pretty teary when they called so Mom figures it would be best if they did not call home much. If my Wife had known this up front, our Daughter would never have gone on the trip. I had to walk on egg shells for 2 weeks.:cool:

The day they were to return home, Mom lets us know they are at the airport and will be headed home soon. We are at the airport anxiously awaiting their arrival. Their flight lands and when the plane is empty, there is no Mom or Daughter. The attendants at the gate know nothing of their whereabouts and do not offer to help find out. Had they known my Wife would have killed one of them in the process of getting an answer if I had not held on to her arm and made soothing noises and promised to get to the bottom of it ASAP, they might have been more cooperative, but they should have interpreted the look in my Wife's eyes as a death threat. She had not talked to her 10 year old Daughter in 11 days and she was about to boil over.

I took my life in my own hands and moved her out of the reception area and headed back to the ticketing area of the airport. Please note that all of this occurred many years ago before cell phones became something everyone had. Even if Mom and Daughter had never left London, we would not know it. Their flight was to come into Detroit for customs and then connect to Nashville. After about 30 mins at the ticketing counter showing ID and convincing them that my Wife would kill someone if they did not get to the bottom of why my Mom and Daughter had disappeared, they finally reveal that the London flight could not land in Detroit and they had missed the connection to Nashville. They had landed in Windsor and would be arriving in Nashville the next day.

The reason they could not land in Detroit? Uncle Sam had closed the airport airspace for about 3 hours in a security measure for an arriving flight carrying Nelson Mandela. I believe if my Wife had met Mandela after that day, she would have tried to claw his eyes out.;) BTW, my Dad was with us in the reception area, but being the smart man he was, he stayed in the background until we got the info we needed. After my Wife and I moved away, he approached the desk and quietly told the attendants that their service sucked and he would never fly with them.:D