Nanny in the Clouds matches caretakers with harried parents in transit
Somewhere in an airplane 35,000 feet in the air your 2-year-old is crying. Wailing, actually. You’ve walked him up and down the aisle five times, fed him the last of the granola bars and sung a million verses of “The Wheels on the Bus” – and you still have hours of flying ahead of you.
Wouldn’t it be great, you fantasize, to have another pair of grown-up hands sharing the burden?
Rutgers graduate Julie Melnick fantasized the same thing during a particularly grueling flight from Florida to California in 2011 with her son Mikey. And then she parlayed thought into action, creating Nanny in the Clouds, a website that pairs parents with registered babysitters on the same plane.
“We are a unique company which is trying to match people in mid-air, literally,” says Melnick. “Anybody flying anywhere in the United States can come to our site and look for a match.”
In her sky-high version of Match.com, participants register for free on the site, and once a connection is made, pay $10 for an introduction to the potential caregiver. It falls to sitter and parents to work out a fee, as well as to make arrangements with the airline to sit together.
Melnick’s brain-child didn’t fly under the radar for long. A brief mention on the Springwise.com website soon led to stories on ABC News, CNN, Fox News Online, the Huffington Post, Time, Forbes and The Economist, among other national publications.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think we would be written up in The Economist,” says Melnick, who in the year and a half post-launch has enlisted about 1,000 potential nannies and an equal number of interested parents.
Still in its infancy, Nanny in the Clouds has made two successful pairings so far.
Juliann Fannin, a corporate flight attendant on a private jet, saw a posting about the venture on an airline industry briefing site and was tickled by the concept. “Not only would the child and family benefit, but so would the flight attendants,” says the Houston resident and former commercial flight attendant for Continental Airlines.
She quickly signed on and found herself on a flight from Los Angeles to New York, tending to the needs of two boys, age 4 and 1½. “It was a great experience all around,” Fannin recalls. “I think it’s very difficult for a parent traveling alone and also kids traveling alone. Just getting checked in through security and to the gate is difficult and frustrating – even without children.”
A second match, this one for a flight between San Francisco and Washington D.C., took place earlier this month.
Melnick says most of her prospective nannies are college students on spring and winter breaks, or former and current flight attendants who qualify to fly for free and who would like to pick up some extra money.
A 2001graduate of the five-year master's in education program in Rutgers' Graduate School of Education, the Cherry Hill native is building the business while serving as full-time mom to Mikey and younger sister Rachel. After a career in teaching, television production and public relations, she works out of her home in Orange County, California, seeking to forge partnerships with airlines and to create buzz among flyers.
Nannies are required to provide two references when they enroll, and Melnick’s site encourages parents to do due diligence via phone conversations and/or face-to-face meetings before the actual flight.
One of Melnick’s greatest challenges is the sheer volume of commercial flights that crisscross the nation every day – close to 30,000, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. To rein in the randomness factor, she’s hoping to link up with airlines making regular New York to Los Angeles runs –more than 30 cross-country jaunts daily, Melnick says.
Five years down the road, she hopes Nanny in the Clouds will be a household name, working in tandem with one or more airlines and perhaps also affiliated with a national nanny-matching service. She has reached out to SitterCity, a national database of experienced child-care providers, to explore the possibility of a working partnership.
While some online parenting and travel sites have posted snarky comments about the business – “How lazy are parents that they can’t even watch their own children?” jeers one reader – Melnick says the need for help during an extended flight goes beyond mere indulgence.
“People writing these comments must never have flown by themselves with one child or more. This is really not about being selfish,” the Rutgers alumna says. “You’re still right there, sitting next to your child, but you have an ally. If you have to change a diaper, for example, you don’t have to leave your other child alone when you go into the restroom.