Parents: You Might Want to Show Your Spawn How to Navigate an Airport

I went to Singapore for lunch the other day, as you do. Well, more specifically for a visa run – visas, as I have remarked elsewhere, are one of the downsides of moving to Bali — but I like to think of it as lunch (Ding Dong by Ryan Clift, since you ask, and a positive steal at SGD35 for three courses including a glass of wine or whisky).

And, on a travelator in Changi Airport, I was grabbed by an anxious-looking European chick aged 20 or so. “Do you know where the flight to Brisbane leaves from?” she asked me.

Well, of course I didn’t know where the flight to Brisbane was leaving from. Changi Airport is a regional hub, so has planes winging their way to Brisvegas 24/7 for all I know.

“What flight number is it?” I ask. She looks at me helplessly. “Is it on your boarding pass?”

She looks at her phone. Uhoh. I am a) incorrigibly polite when it comes to persons struggling to navigate strange things like airports or, ya know, ATMs and b) rather maternal about young adults now that I have one of my own.

“OK,” I say. “Come with me. The gate it leaves from should be on your boarding pass, but that sometimes changes. We’ll find some of the electronic sign boards that show us where flights leave from. There were some back there, but we’ve missed those.”

We duly found a board, on which I located her flight, and pointed her in the direction of the gate. Which made me wonder, as a parent, what on earth HER parents were thinking. Because aren’t airports the sort of thing that, as a parent, you train your child to handle before they fly the nest? Kinda like supermarkets, and banks?

The only thing Bali immigration cares about is a boarding pass proving you went to Singapore in person, rather than sending your passport on a solo holiday to the airport as used to be rather common.

That morning, while queuing for a Singapore entry stamp, I met another young Euro girl, who wanted to stay in the airport rather than pay for a visa to Singapore.

“What nationality are you?” I ask.

“Dutch,” she says.

“You don’t have to pay for a Singapore visa,” I say. “Are you on a visa run from Bali?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Well, I’m fairly sure you can just stay in the airport,” I say. (I’m not convinced of the legality of this, but since the only thing Bali immigration cares about is a boarding pass proving you went to Singapore in person, rather than sending your passport on a solo holiday to the airport as used to be rather common, I don’t think you can get into trouble for it.) “People do. But you might as well see something of Singapore while you’re here. It’s quite nice, you know. Very different from Bali.”

“I hear the airport has a swimming pool,” she says.

And, while Changi airport does indeed have a swimming pool, this too struck me as bizarre. How can anyone have the sophistication to know that Changi airport has a swimming pool, and that Singapore is generally the cheapest option for visa runs from Bali, but NOT know that Singapore gives visa-free entry to citizens of pretty much anywhere that’s not a ‘Stan, sub-Saharan, embroiled in Islamist civil strife or both?

Zac is now, at 14, more than old enough to fly unaccompanied minor without an escort: typically, most airlines will let children fly without an escort from age 12, or thereabouts. And, though he’s been flying unaccompanied minor with an escort for a while, he flew properly solo for the first time this month, en route to visit Dad in Sydney.

I have been preparing him for this, on and off, for a while. By which I mean he keeps the tickets on his iPhone, and shows them to the guy who controls admission to departures. He finds the right checkin desk for our flight, queues up and shows the paperwork. Then he finds what gate to go to, and navigates us to it. He’s been looking after his own passport and boarding pass for a while, and fills in his own forms on landing.

He, obviously, handles security on his own – and not just in mental airports like Jeddah, our first, and so far, our only, experience of The Kingdom, where we once spent a hellish 9-hour layover. Fun fact: there are no ATMs in the Jeddah transit area, you’re not allowed out into the rest of the airport, you can only log onto the wifi if you have a Saudi Arabian mobile phone number, and there is, of course, no booze. Although, on the bright side, Saudi local media is an absolute laugh a minute. (The same department covers cybercrime and sorcery! Go figure!)

In fact, when Zac went off on his first international school trip of the year, to Hong Kong for his maths competition, I flew out ahead of his school arriving at the airport, so dumped him at departures. I’ve also started getting him to do other basic travel tasks, like buying tickets, using an ATM or changing his own money, and I rather think I’ll have him pick our hotel (from Agoda) for our next joint trip in June.

I have never had such unshakeable confidence in my knowledge of the world as I did aged 15. Not that it makes dealing with it any less shouty.

So, with all this prep, I’d like to say Zac’s first attempt at flying unaccompanied minor went swimmingly. It didn’t. Although part of this is due to the magic of Denpasar airport.

Before he went through security, I gave him the following warning: “Be sure to keep an eye on the time. If it gets to the time you should have started boarding, and you’re not boarding, check with an official that you’re at the right gate: they sometimes move flights to new gates without announcing it, and sometimes the boards just break.”

“K,” he said, and toddled off. I love being the mother of a young adult, in general – it, and they, are hugely entertaining, despite the odd bit of selective deafness and that strange conviction that they are 100% right about absolutely bloody everything all of a sudden.

I remember this well. I have never had such unshakeable confidence in my knowledge of the world as I did aged 15. Not that it makes dealing with it any less shouty, or, at the very least, deep-breathy.

Not wanting to helicopter (I save that for school), yet suspecting that my warning has gone in one ear and out the other, and that my spawn is almost certainly 100% focused on Kerbal Space Program or whatever it is they play now, I phone. “Are you at the gate? Did you find the gate?”

“Yes,” he says, in a tone of weariness. “I’m at the gate.”

“K,” I say. “Have a great flight!”

Time passes. More time passes. The time arrives for his flight to start boarding. I ring him again.

“Are you boarding yet?”

“No.”

“Have you asked someone in uniform?”

“No. There isn’t anyone.”

“Then you’re at the wrong gate! Go and find out what gate you’re supposed to be at.”

“On it,” he says, with a sense of urgency that’s rare in my spawn, and hangs up.

Even in Indonesia, planes can’t take off with checked baggage unless the passenger who checked the bags is on board, so the worst that could happen is that Zac holds up his flight and has to do the walk of shame down an aisle of glaring adults. This is, in fact, the only reason Zac has checked bags.

Meanwhile, the sign announces that Zac’s flight is now boarding. Although, annoyingly, the signboard does not specify what gate it is boarding AT, and I’m not airside to find out.

I decide that, even in Indonesia, a desk labelled “Information” is quite likely to have some information, possibly even including the information I’m looking for. I’m not particularly panicked, because, even in Indonesia, planes can’t take off with checked baggage unless the passenger who checked the bags is on it, so the worst that could happen is that Zac holds up his flight, and has to do the walk of shame down an aisle of glaring adults. This contingency plan is, in fact, the only reason Zac has checked bags.

“My son’s flying unaccompanied on the JetStar Sydney flight,” I say. “Can you tell me what gate it’s boarding at, please?”

Information looks at a computer that has information that isn’t on the signboards. Yay! “Gate 4,” he says.

I ring Zac. “Yeah, yeah, I’m there,” he says. “Gate 4. We’re boarding now.”

“K k,” I say. “Have a nice flight!”

His return flight passed uneventfully.

Now, I’m not quite sure where this flood of young adults who can’t navigate airports is coming from.

Back in the Dark Ages, my mother used to shove my brother and me on cross-country trains to see our grandparents when we were 7 and 8 (although she would nab an old lady in the queue and ask her to make sure we got off at the right stop) – and that was long before mobile phones. Zac’s best friend in London routinely travelled solo on EuroStar (with a mother on one side of the Channel and a father on the other, it was pretty much a necessity). Airports are not any harder than train stations and, in many ways, rather easier.

If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that the prevalence of smartphones nowadays, and the often-erroneous assumption that there is accurate info available in seconds at the touch of a button, means that people believe they don’t have to research anything – and also makes parents less inclined to show their offspring how to do stuff. And, of course, children whose parents live together are less likely to fly unaccompanied than single-parent spawn.

Still, it strikes me that preparing young people for travel shouldn’t just stop with showing them how to use a local bus, or a local train, or to cross a road, or drive a car, or stay safe from strangers. Both the practical and the more cerebral elements of travel – getting from A to B, and working out why you want to be in A or B – involve a whole set of life skills that come in really, really handy for activities like deciding where to live and what job you want.

And, since it won’t be long before Zac starts travelling internationally with friends and without me, I’d rather he had them than not.

Image: Travellator, Changi Airport by Amanda Slater on Flickr’s Creative Commons.