UPDATE: Continental Offers Free Flights, Frequent-Flyer Status To Misrouted Child’s Family
Sure, airlines misroute luggage all the time. But how about misrouting a ten-year-old girl to the wrong state?
Yesterday, Jonathan’s ten-year-old daughter boarded a plane from Boston to Cleveland to visit her grandparents. She flew as an unaccompanied minor, meaning that her family paid an extra fee for airline staff to keep an eye on her and make sure she was taken care of and ended up where she needed to be. They didn’t. She ended up on a plane bound for Newark, NJ.
The planes to Cleveland and Newark, both regional jets, used the same departure gate and were parked next to each other on the tarmac. Airline staff put the little girl on the wrong plane, and no one realized that anything was amiss until Jonathan’s in-laws in Ohio received a phone call telling them that they could pick up their granddaughter. In New Jersey.
Jonathan wrote about the situation and the immediate aftermath on his blog:
When the flight arrived in Newark, no one there noticed that my daughter had been put on the wrong flight and flown the wrong city, again despite the fact that her paperwork clearly spelled out both the flight number and destination. The Continental people in Newark called my in-laws’ phone number to tell them to come pick her up as if nothing was wrong, despite the fact that their address on the form was an Ohio address and their phone number had an Ohio area code. The people in Newark did not call my home or cell number to find out why no one was at the airport to pick up my daughter, despite the fact that they had both of those numbers on the same paperwork as my in-laws’ number.
We didn’t find out something was wrong until my father-in-law called me from the arrival gate in Cleveland to ask why my daughter wasn’t on the plane.
It took forty-five minutes from that point until the Continental people in Cleveland finally confirmed that she was in Newark. The only reason they were able to figure it out at all is because I told them that there had been a flight to Newark boarding at the same gate and the best possible explanation for her whereabouts was that the gate agent put her on the wrong flight (the alternatives were much worse!). God only knows how long it would have taken them to figure out where she was if I hadn’t noticed the Newark flight leaving from Boston and mentioned it to them.
The folks in Cleveland “graciously” offered to refund the unaccompanied minor fee. My father-in-law laughed when they made the offer, it was so outrageous. You can bet they’ll be refunding a lot more than that fee by the time I’m done with them.
I can see all of the parents reading this post shuddering right now. Jonathan has contacted the airline as well as the FAA, and hopes to hear back from them very, very soon.
Another airline screwup you just will NOT believe: Continental puts my unaccompanied minor daughter on the wrong plane! [Something better to do]
Frequently Asked Questions about Children Traveling Alone [Continental Airlines]
(Photo: quinnanya)
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We hear so many stories about airlines now adays this one was truly scary.
allegent air left my son (10) in Chicago. He was on a flight from denver to central Il. and transfered through Chicago. We also paid the extra fee. The worst was when they found him, I asked if he was hungry and he said yes. I asked the person on the other end to get him some food since he had to wait 5 hours for the next flight and they didn’t even get him a drink.
It’s astounding how many people express an opinion without first bothering to make sure they know what the hell they’re talking about.
I did, in fact, escort my daughter all the way to the correct gate. I handed her and her paperwork off to the gate agent and watched the gate agent take her down the ramp and put her onto a plane.
It was the wrong plane. If you can suggest some way how I might have known that, I’m all ears.
Some have said that I should have taken her onto the plane and checked myself that it was the right one. First of all, that was never offered to me as an option by the airline. Second, even if it had been, I’m not sure I would have seen it as necessary, since it never would have occurred to me in a million years that two flights would be boarded at the same time from the same gate, let alone that a gate agent would be so stupid as to put my child on the wrong plane and then the flight crew would be so stupid as to not check her paperwork or notice that she wasn’t listed on the manifest. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live my entire life assuming that everyone around me is a moron and I have to do absolutely everything myself or it’s going to go wrong.
And, by the way, one of the points of allowing our daughter to fly unattended was because she is old enough to have that small amount of independence and responsibility, and I don’t think that message would have been conveyed particularly well if I had treated her like a child half her age by walking her onto the plane myself. My wife wrote a great piece on this idea which you can read on my blog should you care to do so.
For those who say that my daughter should have noticed she was on the wrong plane, you’re right. I wish she had, and you can be sure that both she and we have learned that the next time we have to let one of our children fly unaccompanied, that’s one of the things we will make SURE they know. But again, it never would have occurred to me in a million years that this would be an issue, and it in no way absolves the airline of responsibility for what they did, and the whole point of charging an unaccompanied minor fee is that they are making you pay them extra in exchange for promising to TAKE CARE OF YOUR CHILD, not send her to the wrong friggin’ city. Not to mention that there’s a damn good chance that if she had noticed she was on the wrong plane and spoken up about it, the flight crew would have told her to sit down and shut up.