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As the day begins, panic spreads through the McCallister family. The parents’ alarm clock never rings, bags and coats spill out on the floor, and the family rushes out the door to catch the flight. Florida,
The commotion at the airport has intensified. There, the McCallisters must avoid fellow leisure travelers and luggage as they speed toward their gate while the final boarding call echoes overhead. Amidst the chaos, 10-year-old Kevin accidentally boards the wrong plane and finds himself alone new york city Just a few days before Christmas.
More than 30 years after “Home Alone” turned travel chaos into comedy, the frantic opening scenes of the film’s 1992 sequel still hit close to home, especially as the busy year-end travel period begins. But will Kevin McAllister still be “Lost in New York” in 2025?
In the era of federal airport security checkpoints and digitized air travel, the fictional character played by Macaulay Culkin almost certainly could not board a commercial plane himself, said Sheldon Jacobson, who studies air travel operations and security and whose research contributed to the design of TSA PreCheck.
“In the 1990s, this was laudable,” Sheldon said. “It was so close to plausible that people weren’t rolling their eyes at it, but that wouldn’t happen today.”
Mix-ups are rarely possible in a film
The attacks of September 11, 2001 fundamentally changed Americans The Transportation Security Administration moved through airports, ushering in the creation of government-run security checks, mandatory ID checks, and restricted gate access. Before 9/11, passengers could board straight to their plane with little more than a paper ticket. Now, every passenger and bag is screened, names are checked against the flight list and access beyond security checkpoints is strictly controlled.
Even the paper tickets that made Kevin’s involvement possible are now largely a thing of the past. In the film, Kevin takes a man wearing a coat like his father to the wrong gate at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, then bumps into an airline agent, sending both his ticket and boarding pass flying onto the floor. Kevin explains that his family is already on the plane and he doesn’t want to be left behind.
“Do you have a boarding pass?” the agent asks. Kevin points to the stack of paper tickets and is finally allowed to board the plane.
Today, boarding passes are linked to specific passengers, often stored on smartphones and scanned at the gate to confirm that passengers are on the correct flight. Jacobson said airlines’ strict non-recourse short policies and fees today would add another layer of protection.
In the film, the gate agent walks Kevin down the jet bridge and asks if he sees his family on the plane. Kevin points out the stranger he has mistaken for his father. The agent signals him, tells him to take an empty seat and that’s it.
Strict rules on children flying alone
Today unaccompanied minors are being closely monitored. Most carriers require children under a certain age, often 14 or younger, to formally register as unaccompanied minors if they are not traveling with an adult, Jacobson said. It comes with special paperwork and airline staff members who are tasked with escorting a child through the airport to their seat on the plane and off the plane at their destination.
The Biden administration proposed a rule last year that would have prohibited airlines from charging families extra to sit together on flights and required children 13 and younger to sit next to an adult at the time of booking if adjacent seating is available. Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said earlier this month he had no update on the proposal.
Even if all existing security measures fail, a passenger on the wrong plane would receive immediate attention, Jacobson said. Flight attendants review passenger counts and special-service lists before departure. The disappearance of a 10-year-old boy from one flight and an additional child from another flight would raise immediate alarm.
In other words, the magic of the movie continues 33 years after “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” came out. The logistics aren’t there, Jacobson said.
“We take for granted that at that time we had freedoms that we don’t have today,” he said. “We had to give up those freedoms in exchange for other freedoms, like safe air travel.”
what to expect this week
The December holidays can still be a busy time for travel. This year, 122.4 million Americans were expected to travel at least 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home between Saturday and New Year’s Day, up from last year’s record of 119.7 million, according to AAA’s holiday forecast.
“Celebrating the holidays looks different for everyone, but the common thread is the desire to travel, whether it’s returning to one’s hometown or exploring new destinations,” said Stacey Barber, vice president of AAA Travel.
About 89% of holiday travelers, or 109.5 million people, are expected to go by car, while more than 8 million are expected to take domestic flights, AAA said. The number of travelers for the holiday period will be a record, despite domestic roundtrip flights costing an average of 7% more than last year, according to AAA data.
In a fictional 1992 story, Kevin spends a luxurious stay in Manhattan Plaza Hotelwhere he passes by for a while donald trumpWho owned the hotel from 1988 to 1995. Trump’s long association with the hotel and its brief film cameos have occasionally come up during his political career and presidency.
The same thieves who previously terrorized the McCallister family’s Chicago home in “Home Alone” are in New York for the sequel, and plot to steal a cash donation from a toy store for a children’s hospital. With a mischievous smile, Kevin sets up a series of elaborate traps, sending the crooks stumbling, sliding and screaming through the store and foiling their Christmas Eve plans.
When the thrill of his solo adventure wears off, Kevin misses his family and longs to see his mother – “even if it’s just once and only for a few minutes,” he says. “I just have to tell him I’m sorry.” At that very moment, his mother appears, and they reunite under the twinkling Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.
“It’s a wonderful story element,” Adam Paul, a film professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said of the holiday chaos at the center of the “Home Alone” films. “But ultimately it’s a great representation of how and why we make these trips.”