OK, so based on your own experience, you can see that airlines tend to think of all people as passengers, regardless of their age. At 13, I think he could have flown unescorted. Delta is not my favorite airline, either. And the airline which wouldn't help with my seating has since been absorbed into another airline.
I already have heard the horror stories about Allegiant. I had considered flying them out of Ft Wayne IN to AZ but there really wasn't much savings and the times or days did not work. I was going early to the wedding to help. Housing is going to be my next issue. The wedding is in Des Moines, IA, so it will be interesting to see what my options are.
I'm not sure if the age limits are standard with all airlines but it appears with most airlines ages 5-14 are considered an unaccompanied minor if they are flying alone. Under 5 they must be accompanied by another passenger at least 15-18 years old depending on the airline.
There are a number of legal ramifications if anything were to go wrong on a flight and you or another adult accompanying you weren't at least seated with, across the aisle, or in the row in front of or behind all of your children. Think about the safety instructions, on every single flight; they instruct you to secure your own oxygen mask before seeing to your children. My first question to the gate agents and flight attendants would be who is going to be responsible for helping my child/grandchild in an emergency?
We live in the age of the internet and cell phones. People take pictures and videos and can research almost anything with their phones. Can you even imagine the worldwide outcry and the lawsuit awards if an airline neglected to ensure that your child was seated close to you and in searching the internet you identified one of the child's seatmates as being a registered sex offender?
I'm remembering the time my granddaughter threw up on a flight when she was about 3.5 years old. She was napping, suddenly woke up and proceeded to throw up with no warning. I was quick and shoved my jacket in front of her so the mess wasn't bad. I always have a couple of plastic grocery bags and a change of clothes for her. I double wrapped my jacket and her clothes so no one had to smell the vomit. Fortunately there was no one in the other seat in our row that flight. About 15 minutes later she threw up again but at least this time I had another plastic bag ready just in case. I held her and kept her calm so she wasn't crying or screaming like most kids that age would have been. The flight attendants hadn't even been aware that there was anything going on until I had to ask them for a plastic bag as I had used my last one. They even offered me, gasp, a free bottle of water but I had water and a couple of paper towels left from our first trip to the bathroom to clean up so all I needed was another bag. Anyhow I'm imagining what that would have been like for her and her seatmates if she hadn't been seated with me. When my son and DIL picked us up I told them she had been sick and was warm when she first woke up but by the time we got home she was fine. Kids!
Except for that one time which was easily fixed we've always been assigned seats next to our granddaughter. There has only been a very few times our son, DIL or I have flown the major airlines with her. Most the flights were on Spirit and occasionally Allegiant. I haven't used Frontier in about 2 years now since they dropped the flights out of Fort Lauderdale except for Trenton and Cincinnati in favor of Miami for the other cities. My husband has flown a lot over the years for work in addition to our personal flights. When I tell him his options for his work flights he will choose Spirit if they have flights where he is going and we aren't even paying for the flights so price isn't a consideration. He and I would both tell you that we have been very pleased with Spirit. However I should add that I am 5'6", he is 5'9" and neither one of us has long legs. Besides getting great prices with Spirit and Allegiant too the one thing we really like about both of them is that we can almost always get nonstop flights. Neither one of us is a fan of layovers and plane changes and nonstop flights can be hard to find with the big carriers. On one flight for work this year my husband was on a brand new plane with Southwest and was really disappointed because the seats were smaller and not comfortable. He recently had the opportunity to fly Jet Blue for the first time for a work trip and I warned him not to get too spoiled!
Flying isn't a once or twice a year big event for us so our criteria is get us to where we are going as conveniently and inexpensively as possible. I'm not going to pay twice the price or more just to get a free beverage and pretzels. We spend the $69.95 renewal price to be in the Spirit $9 fare club to get the lowest prices on flights and bags. I book on the Spirit website, I know when to book to get the best prices, I know to pay for the bags when I book the flights and we print our own boarding passes. When I hear anyone say they paid what I consider a lot for a Spirit flight it is either because they didn't know the ins and outs of booking with Spirit or they were flying very last minute when no cheap flights were available. This Spring I spent $214, total not per flight, for 3 round trip non stop flights from Fort Lauderdale to Cleveland, Ohio with one shared checked bag each way. Other people are completely happy to pay that much for a single flight to not have to fly a discount airline and that is their money, their choice and their business.
Funny story about last minute flights. They aren't always expensive. In March I took our granddaughter back to Ohio while my husband was out of town for work. He was picking up my car at the off site parking when his flight got in and called to ask where my house keys were. In my purse of course because you don't leave your house keys with the parking people, duh. It never occurred to me that he wouldn't have taken his own house keys with him and to hide my house keys in the car. We have very expensive hurricane rated doors and the specialty lock would have cost around $250 to replace if a locksmith had to drill the lock out to get him in. An emergency call from a locksmith isn't cheap either. I whipped open my laptop and started searching the different airlines for flights. I found a flight home on Allegiant for $72 leaving in two hours and was at the airport in 45 minutes from the time he called. Our neighbor now has a key!
We've noticed in the past year that the Spirit flight attendants seem to be making a real effort to up their game. Even the pilots are talking more too. All the bad publicity the major carriers have been getting from incidents probably has something to do with it. I've had a couple of attendants do pre-flight instructions that were funnier than some of the routines we've seen in comedy clubs! On another recent flight one of the attendants had a bag of lollipops she was passing out to the kids half way through the flight.