Mom Details How Her Teen Ended Up Stranded in NYC for 5 Days Alone After Airline Cancellations: 'Beside Myself' (Exclusive)

• Jenn had planned to fly from Florida to New York and back with her 16-year-old before flights were grounded after a major technical mishap
• As flights began to return, Jenn discovered her 16-year-old couldn’t fly home as an “unaccompanied minor.”
• A frustrated mom told PEOPLE what it was like trying to bring the teenager home for almost a week

Jenn thought getting her daughter back after her first long absence from home would be as easy as leaving. Fate wanted it not to be like that.

A worried mom posted on X to ask for help or guidance after her 16-year-old daughter was stranded in New York. The family was among the countless people affected by a major worldwide IT disruption affecting Microsoft Windows and all computer systems that use it as a result of the Crowdstrike update on Friday, July 19.

Jenn was scheduled to fly out at 7:00 am on Friday, July 19th. She was supposed to fly to New York and pick up her teenage daughter from the pre-college program she attended at Barnard College. Jenn arrived at her local airport by 5:30am. There was no notice of delays or problems before Mom showed up at the airport. When she got there, she heard a “rumble” of the problems she was about to face.

“The first thing that happens is our flight is delayed at 9:00. I have a connecting flight in Atlanta, so I call my daughter. I wake her up and say, ‘Listen, I might miss my connecting flight. I have to figure it out, but I could come later this afternoon,’ Jenn tells PEOPLE of her conversation with her daughter.

“My first concern was that she would have to check out of this program and have no place to stay. We had reservations at the Moxie in the East Village, but she was uptown. I’m wondering, ‘How is she going to get into a hotel room? ?’ I tried to think of other flights on other airlines, but nothing was available. I called her and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to have to fly home yourself.’ ”

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Delta planes grounded at LaGuardia Airport.

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“I assured her that I would try to work this out with her. She was a little freaked out,” she says of her teenage daughter.

Noting that their family is from a “mid-sized town” in Florida, Jenn says it was a shock for her daughter to face navigating New York alone.

“I called the school to talk to them around 10:00. The school said they could print it with my permission. I called the hotel and they said you need an adult with ID to check her into the hotel room. So I’m starting to figure out who I know, and I don’t really know anyone up there to whom I would entrust my child,” she explains.

“Coincidentally, someone else I know said her husband’s flight was also canceled in New York. So I asked him where he was staying and coincidentally, he was also staying at the same hotel because their daughter lives in the East Village. So I said, ” Perfect, can he report her? I’ll add it to my booking.” And she said yes.”

A picture of different taxis on the street of New York.

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Jenn took her daughter, got her an Uber, and stayed with her while she met her colleague’s husband, who was a stranger to her.

“I wasn’t trying to make him responsible for her in any way. I thought she would just sleep in a hotel, get up in the morning and fly home,” she notes.

However, the next morning, Jenn learned that this was just the beginning of a bigger problem. Delta sent out a warning that “unaccompanied minors” cannot fly.

Jenn went to “look up what an unaccompanied minor is” and discovered, “It’s a designation, part of a program where you have to be between a certain age and apply for it specifically.”

“She is not part of that program and can fly alone. Nowhere does it say ‘No one under the age of 18 can fly without a parent.’ It says ‘unaccompanied minor,’ which is language specific to that airline program,” says Jenn.

Picture of a child sitting on a coffin looking at the departure board.

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Jenn stayed to talk to her daughter as she took another taxi ride and was alone at the airport for the first time.

“She gets there and does everything she needs to. They check her bag when they tell her she can’t fly. The flight went ahead, but she couldn’t fly because she’s an unaccompanied minor,” says the mom.

That was frustrating for Jenn, who notes that her teenage daughter was not included in that program. The airline assured her that the stop for minor passengers was only for one day. They helped her rebook the teenager on “the same flight from LaGuardia home on Sunday.”

“She’s upset and crying, but I tell her everything will be fine. I called the hotel, and because it was so early, the room wasn’t checked out. So I rebooked the room. I took her back to the hotel and told her that stay there,” she says.

In addition to trying to figure out the logistics, Jenn was concerned that her daughter was “scared.” She was determined to find answers.

“I call Delta. I’m on hold to talk to someone for hours. When I answer, they don’t have anything for me — no coupons, no unaccompanied minors plan. As a mom, I’m thinking, ‘What about the other kids who didn’t have a hotel room and they know anyone up there who could check them into the hotel?’ ”

Picture of a tired woman leaning against her suitcase in an airport lounge.

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The next day they tried again. Jenn checked for updates on unaccompanied minor travel.

“He gets there. He gets to the counter. They say, ‘The embargo on unaccompanied minors has been extended until Tuesday,'” she reveals, adding that, “At that point, the s— really hit the fan.”

“The hotel was checked out. I was completely beside myself. I said, ‘She has nowhere to go, so what’s going on now?’ They said, ‘Well, she can stay in the SkyPriority lounge. There are kids there.’ “The kids spent the night in the SkyPriority Lounge at Delta, LaGuardia, because they couldn’t get into the hotel rooms because they were underage,” she explains.

“They had staff there monitoring them. I said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable with that.’ I’m hysterical, she’s crying.”

Jenn tried to get a flight to New York to escort her daughter back. She booked a flight for Sunday, only to have that flight canceled as well. Frustrated, she looked for another solution so that her daughter would not wait endlessly at the airport.

Aerial image of buildings in Manhattan at night.

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Jenn tried with her colleague and found that he was supposed to return that day but had not left the hotel. He was able to add Jenna’s daughter to his reservation so she could return to the hotel and stay in the room.

It seemed as though she must have survived another day when her colleague’s husband’s flight home was also cancelled. Now he needed the hotel room back.

“She goes back to the hotel and luckily, he booked her another room. She goes there, and in the meantime, Delta rebooked her flight for Tuesday. I knew in my heart they were going to extend this, so I started looking to get a flight there,” she says.

Jenn was unlucky with her flight and had no choice but to wait until Tuesday morning. Then her “fears” happened.

“Her flight was canceled because the embargo is still in place. She can’t fly, but this time at least we knew before we got to the airport. I called a colleague and said, ‘When is your flight?’ He said, ‘Well actually, my flight isn’t until Wednesday.’ I called the airline and they were able to link my daughter to his booking so it looks like she was accompanied, but they didn’t have to sit together.”

Jenn Stutler and daughter, smiling during their reunion after 5 days apart.

Jenn Stutler

That plan worked, and the teenager arrived home from New York on Wednesday after being stuck for five days.

“It was a nightmare because every time I tried to get anyone on the phone at Delta, I was on hold for hours. There was no communication. Minors were not prioritized over everyone else. There was no contact with parents for updates or a watch list.” , she says.

“There was very poor communication with Delta and it made it difficult to make good decisions. There were no vouchers given for anything. Afterwards I got an email from them saying, ‘We would like to extend the 4,000 Sky miles as an apology.’ ‘ That’s about $150 worth of Sky miles. It was disgusting.”

Jenn wasn’t worried about the cost of trying to get her daughter home, but notes that it ended up being “over $3,500.”

“Of course my child came first. But it cost a little and I had no choice. She had to be in that hotel because the husband of a colleague was there who could help. Between the room extension, meals, Ubers, it was very expensive and traumatic,” she says.

“She came home and felt crazy, like during the pandemic when you didn’t know what was going to happen from day to day. She was worried if she would see me. She also has a twin sister, and this was the first time that they was a lot.”

For the mom, who still had the rest of her life to manage as usual, “it was super frustrating and stressful.”

“Obviously, I work and have to balance that with my other kids and my husband. The hardest part was not being able to make good decisions about what to do next because the limited information we were getting was always changing.”

“It’s kind of scary that a software bug can bring down an entire transportation system. It’s made me less confident in traveling in general. Bottom line, I’m very disappointed. I’ve been a loyal Delta customer for a while and she was just disappointed in communication and contact,” says Jenn.

“I think they need to revise their program and plans for minors travel. They could have done a better job of communicating, from what it means to be an unaccompanied minor to when the embargo is lifted. It should have been clearer and they should have reached out to parents.”

She continues: “It was quite frightening that they were exposed to so much, now known to have no emergency equipment. All I could think about were the parents whose children were trapped in the Sky Lounge. What are you feeding them? And they were sleeping on the floor.”

When asked for comment, Delta directed PEOPLE to its website, which lists how customers can seek reimbursement and refunds for various travel mishaps resulting from the incident.

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