Panic erupts in the McCallister household as soon as the day begins. Parents The alarm never rings, bags and coats fall to the floor, and beds barrel Out the door To catch a flight to Florida.
The commotion intensifies at the airport. There, the McCallisters must dodge fellow vacation travelers and luggage as they rush toward their gate while final boarding calls echo through the sky. Amidst the chaos, 10-year-old Kevin accidentally boards the wrong plane and finds himself alone in New York City just days before Christmas.
More than 30 years after “Home Alone” turned the chaos of travel into comedy, the frenetic opening scenes of the 1992 film’s sequel still hit close to home, especially as people get busier. Travel period is the end of the year It starts. But will Kevin McCallister still end up “lost in New York” in 2025?
In the era of federalism Airport security checkpoints And digital air travel, the fictional character you play Macaulay Culkin He almost certainly would not have boarded a commercial plane alone, said Sheldon Jacobson, who studies air travel operations and security and whose research contributed to the design of the commercial plane. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Prescreening..
“In the 1990s, it made sense,” Sheldon said. “It was so close to plausible that people didn’t pay attention to it, but that’s not going to happen today.”
September 11, 2001 attacks Changed radically How Americans move through airports, marking the creation of… Transportation Security Administrationrun by the government Security offersMandatory identity checks and restricted access to the portal. Before September 11, travelers could go directly to their plane using only a paper ticket. Now, every passenger and bag is screened, names are checked against flight manifests, and access past security checkpoints is tightly controlled.
Even the paper tickets that made Kevin’s mingling possible are largely a thing of the past. In the film, Kevin frantically follows a man wearing a coat like his father’s to the wrong gate at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, then bumps into an airline agent, sending his ticket and a stack of boarding passes fluttering to the ground. Kevin explains that his family is already on board 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 eventually allowed to board the plane.
Today, boarding passes are linked to specific travellers, and are often stored on smartphones and scanned at the gate to ensure travelers are on the correct flight. Today’s stricter unaccompanied minor policies and fees imposed by airlines will add another layer of protection, Jacobson said.
In the movie, the gate agent walks with Kevin under the jet bridge and asks him if he saw his family on the plane. Kevin points out the stranger he mistook for his father. The agent waves at him and asks him to take an empty seat and that’s it.
Today, unaccompanied minors are closely monitored. Most airlines require children 14 or younger to officially register as unaccompanied minors if they are not traveling with an adult, Jacobson said. This comes with special paperwork and airline staff tasked with escorting the child through the airport, to his seat on the plane and off the plane to his destination.
The Biden administration proposed a rule last year to prevent airlines from doing so Families shipping Additional fees for seating together on flights and requiring children aged 13 and under to be seated next to an accompanying adult when adjacent seating is available when booking. Transport Minister Sean Duffy said earlier this month he had no update on the proposal.
Even if all guarantees are current Failed somehowA passenger on the wrong plane would be quickly noticed, Jacobson said. Flight attendants review passenger numbers and special service menus before departure. The disappearance of a 10-year-old boy from one flight and an additional child on another would set off immediate alarms.
In other words, the movie’s magic still holds up 33 years after Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was released. Logistics doesn’t do that, Jacobson said.
“We consider that we had those freedoms then that we do not have today, and for good reason,” he said. “We had to give up those freedoms for other freedoms, like safer air travel.”
December holidays are still a tough time to 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, surpassing last year’s record of 119.7 million, according to AAA’s holiday forecast.
“Holiday celebrations look different for everyone, but the common denominator is the desire to travel, whether that’s returning to your hometown or exploring new destinations,” said Stacey Barber, vice president of AAA Travel.
About 89% of vacation travelers, or 109.5 million people, are expected to travel by car, while more than 8 million are expected to take domestic flights, AAA said. Passenger numbers will be a record high over the holiday period despite round-trip domestic flights costing 7% on average compared to last yearAccording to AAA data.
Back in the fictional year 1992, Kevin is staying at a luxury hotel in Manhattan. Plaza Hotelwhere he briefly met Donald Trump, who owned the hotel from 1988 to 1995. Past connection To the hotel and His short film cameo It may come sometimes During his political career And presidencies.
The same burglars who terrorized the McCallister family’s Chicago home in the first Home Alone movie are in New York for the sequel, planning to steal cash donations from a toy store for a children’s hospital. With a sly smile, Kevin sets up a series of over-the-top traps, causing the crooks to stumble, slip and scream through the store and foil their Christmas Eve plot.
As the excitement of his solo adventure wears off, Kevin misses his family and longs to see his mother — “even if it’s just once and for just a couple of minutes,” he says. “I just want to tell her I’m sorry.” At that very moment, his mother appeared, and they reunited under the sparkling Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.
“It’s a great story element,” Adam Ball, a film professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said of the holiday chaos that was central to the “Home Alone” films. “But in the end it’s a great representation of how and why we take these journeys.”