Frontier's Computer System Lands Unaccompanied Minor In Security Room For An Hour
Ok, here's a crazy idea: if you're an airline, and you have a form with room to list two adults who are authorized to pick up an unaccompanied minor, wouldn't it make sense to have room for both names in your computer system? Because whoever is running Frontier Airline's system doesn't seem to think so! Kayla's mother spent a frantic hour, IDs in hand, trying to prove that she was authorized to meet her 13-year-old daughter at the gate. The form accompanying her daughter clearly had both her and Kayla's father listed, but the computer listed only the father's name. While Frontier sorted out the confusion, Kayla spent an hour waiting in Denver Airport's security room.
Our tipster writes:
My 13 year old daughter Taylor's best friend Kayla moved to Colorado last year. As Taylor and Kayla were saying their goodbyes we told them we would have Kayla out for a visit someday.So this summer Kayla's parents arranged for Kayla to come visit my Daughter here in California for a week in June. Kayla's parents flew her out via Frontier airlines and paid the extra $100 unaccompanied minor fee. My wife picked Kayla up from the airport without a hitch and everything was fine.
Fast forward to the day of the return trip a week later.
Kayla's flight was scheduled to leave from San Diego at 2:59PM. I called Frontier Airlines around 11:00 AM to make sure the flight was on time and to see how early we needed to arrive at the airport and to verify her reservation. While talking to the agent I found out that even though Kayla's mother had put me on the list of people authorized to receive a gate pass so I could walk Kayla to her departure gate, I was not showing up in Frontiers computer system. After a few phone calls to Kayla's Mother and to Frontier we straightened this out and I was placed on the approval list in Frontiers System.
We showed up 2 hours early to the airport for her flight. While checking Kayla in I was required to fill out Frontiers standard unaccompanied minor request for carriage form which contains all the contact information on who is dropping the minor off and who will be picking the minor up from the destination airport. The form was filled out completely with both kaylas mother and father being the recipients. Kayla bags were checked in and I was given a gate pass.
After waiting an hour and a half at the departure gate the same ticket agent that checked us in called Kayla's name to board early. We walked up to the gate and gave the agent the paperwork we had along with the request for carriage form. The agent took the paperwork, said thank you and immediately turned and started walking down boarding ramp with Kayla. I stopped the agent and asked, "dont I get a receipt or anything?! " The agent stopped and looked at the other agent at the gate. "I guess we could give him our copy" she said to the agent behind the check in counter. She then flipped through the FIVE duplicate pages on the form and pulled out a canary colored copy and gave it to me. I commented to her that I just gave her a very precious passenger and to be careful with her. I also told Kayla that if she was taken off the plane for any reason to immediately call me. I called Kayla's mother and let her know that her daughter was on the flight and was on her way home and to call me as soon as she had Kayla in hand.
So fast forward 3 hours later and I get a call from Kaylas Mother. I was expecting to hear that she had Kayla but instead she asked who's name I had filled out on the request for carriage form. She had been getting the run around at the Frontier check gate in Colorado. Even though she was the legal guardian and had the proper forms and I.D. Frontier would not let her have a gate pass to meet and pick up her daughter at the gate. When I talked to her she was frantic. I checked the receipt that I insisted the agent in San Diego give me. Her mother was listed first and then her Father.
So I called Frontier airlines and explained the situation. They told me that they didn't know why her mother was not on the list but that her father was listed and there is only room in the system for one name. They said it was corrected and I called Kayla's mother back to inform her. At this point the plane had been on the ground for some time and through text messages we found out Kayla was taken to a security station at the denver airport and placed in a holding room. It was about an hour before she was finally reunited with her mother.
In my opinion this is inexcusable. Not only did her mother have to pay an extra $100 unaccompanied minor charge to the airline, but the airline dropped the ball and didn't get it right. They left a mother in a panic for an hour in a busy airport and scared the heck out of an innocent 13 year old girl by placing her in a security room. All the agents had to do is look at the request for carriage form that was with her.
I'm writing this because I think Frontier Airlines needs to carefully review and revise their procedures to insure that this never has to happen to another parent of child flying with them again. I think they also owe Kayla's mother a refund for at least $100 for the unaccompanied minor fee and a huge apology .
(Photo: ATIS547)
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Comments:
They should have just passed the kid off to the first person willing to take her.
Sounds to me like software developed to ISO-9001 quality standards via outsourcing.
...these kinds of situations usually happen because the programmer isn't familiar with the 'real-life' problems that arise...
I think you meant to say that programmers don't care about the 'real life' problems that arise. I've written enough [non-super important] code to know that I rarely care about the improbable cases...I just usually keep my fingers crossed.
Still, this seems like it would have happened enough times to have been fixed by now...
At least she showed up at the right airport. That's a plus, isn't it?
At least they were making sure she was picked up by the right person. I mean, it was a mess, but imagine the problem if she was picked up by someone else, or if the mother really didn't have proper custody.
Not blaming the OP here. Mistakes where made. However, from a security perspective, they err'd on the side of caution.
At 13, you shouldn't even need to bother with the UM status anymore anyway - she can fly as a regular passenger, and save the $100.
@taking_this_easy: We have no idea what the programmer was told. If he or she was told to program in one name field, then why would you blame him or her?
@taking_this_easy: this is hardly an edge case, this sounds much more like "the paper form used to have one name, now it has two" sort of situation.
@taking_this_easy: Or the programmers weren't given the form that their program was supposed to be based on..
Again, I'm confused by a story told here--didn't the child offer up (on her own) the documentation she had with her at any time?
Even at age 13, I should think she would have smarts enough to pull out her papers and point to where Mommy AND Daddy's names and contact info are.
Then there's the reference to text messages--plainly she had the means to communicate to Mommy and vice-versa--didn't anyone see this as a means to establish where (and who) the adults were to pick up the child?
There's GOT to be more to this story than we're seeing here.
@supercereal:
Woudln't it be up to the company requesting the software to account for "real life" problems? Most professions i've seen that code, build, sew, whatever, build to a list set out by the company requesting the product.
Some people have only 1 arm but T-shirts still are made with 2. Thats how they are requested from the companies selling them.
Maybe if during the testing, they used one of the programmer's kids they would have found out about the problem. Isn't that what a test system is for?
Development / Test / Release to Production.
When I think of the testing I used to have to go through just to change a report for bank's foreign exchange system, and that's only money, you would think they'd test a little harder.
@The-Lone-Gunman: They might not have actually told the child why she was being taken to the holding room. Or they might have just said "no one showed up to get you, so you need to wait here until we can get someone to pick you up".
Maybe the kids should be taking their own pre-paid-for-one-month cell phone with them on these flights.
Certainly the computer systems need to be developed correctly. Track down where the flaw was (was the software coded to specs, or were the specs wrong), and fire the person who made the mistake (yeah, I do mean fire them ... there are plenty of people willing to do the job right).
Surprised the kid and the mother didn't get handcuffed and strip-searched. The way the TSA is today, it would not surprise me in the slightest.
@taking_this_easy: All to easy to blame the programmer when problems arise. As a programmer myself I write the programs that companies pay me to write. It's not my job (usually) to determine how many people can fit in to form. That's a "business rule".
@socalrob:
Most professions i've seen that code, build, sew, whatever, build to a list set out by the company requesting the product.
Work as an engineer long enough, and you'll know that the requirements are underdefined 99.9% of the time. Far too many disputes arise because whoever drafted the requirements didn't know what they wanted or did not account for all possible scenarios. Most of the time, a product will be developed correctly, but to an ambiguous set of specifications. There are no better contracts than those that contain the words "should," "may," "and/or," etc. -- those words are our ticket to less work.
Still, my original comment was primarily sarcastic.
@The-Lone-Gunman: The kid was probably confused and terrified. Some 13 year olds might have the presence of mind to insist that all the adults arguing around them look at a piece of paper, but many would not. Heck, a lot of adults freeze up around all the airport bureaucracy BS.
@attackgypsy: I'm surprised too that the mother wasn't handcuffed and held somewhere. After all, the attendants are just seeing some crazy lady demand to pick up a child and no proof that she should have been there. With the state of the TSA today and flight attendents assuming they have the same authority as police, I would have guessed that she was at least dragged aside and searched. Good for the mother that she was lucky to avoid that part at least.
@supercereal:
Well thats what I'm getting at, I don't think its the programmers don't care, or their fault for this. It's the company not knowing what they want.
I probably missed the sarcasm of your comment though, although the internet doesn't show sarcasm very well. Thats in the next draft of dhtml I believe.
@The-Lone-Gunman: If they're in major CYA mode, they're not going to trust the kid over their records.
@taking_this_easy: The situation was definitely uncomfortable, maybe even scary, but the system DID work. The Unaccompanied Minor rules are designed to protect the child from being picked up or dropped off without authorization. Was it awkward -- yes. Was the child kept safe -- yes. The delay for the parent and child was because the identity and authorization couldn't be verified. Once it was the family was reunited. The system worked....albeit with great difficulty.
@NeverLetMeDown: Totally agreed. I was flying without the "unaccompanied minor" status at that age, because it's not like it's that hard for a kid to figure out how to get from a gate to the baggage claim area. I don't know why you'd pay for this kind of "service" for a 13-year-old in a secured area of an airport. The parents in this story seem way overprotective. At 13, I was even navigating the Atlanta airport by myself to make connections.
This isn't blaming the victim, as Frontier did screw up here, but maybe the best solution is to just drop some of the hysteria and trust your kid to walk out of the airport on their own. Especially if the kid seemingly has a cell phone, it's not like they're really in any serious danger being alone in an airport, or at least not anymore than they would be anywhere else in public.
@kathyl: More likely, the gate agents wouldn't have listened to her anyway even if she did have a clue what was going on. For liability reasons, once you sign up for the UM service, the airlines will not listen to the kid about where they are and aren't supposed to be going. I know this because I flew unaccompanied many times from when I was about 8 years old until I turned 12 or so and started flying without an escort. There were many times that I had a much better idea about where I was supposed to go than the airline escorts did, but they rightfully checked the paperwork instead of just taking my word for it.
If anything, given all the security paranoia in airports these days and parents who tend to overreact about anything that happens with their kid when they're out of their sight, it's probably even more locked down now than it was 20 years ago when I did it.
As a contract software developer, we can only develop what the customer wants regardless of how stupid it may be at times. Most of the time our suggestions to make things better get ignored. So blame the person who developed the application requirements...a person who usually doesn't fall under the "IT Department".
It sounds like her mother had some sort of proof that she was her daughter. Even if, for some reason or another, the mother's name was nowhere to be found on any Frontier papers, wouldn't proof of guardianship be sufficient?
I mean, if a child can't leave with her own mother, who can she leave with?
I flew alone at age 13 (NY to Louisiana with a layover) to visit my grandparents and it was terrifying. I had an ID card for unaccompanied minor pinned to my shirt, yet I mostly wandered around the terminal by myself in a panic, begging employees to point me in the right direction and almost missing my flight. No one "accompanied me" they just said "your gate is that way."
At one point on the return flight layover, an employee worried about me getting lost, so he put me in "security room" ALONE with a drugged/drunk/mentally insane woman who was spitting and swearing and handcuffed to a bench. I thought she was going to kill me and the door was locked. They came back half an hour later to get me for my connection.
I don't think I could ever put my own kid on a plane alone. I'd fly there with him, drop him off, and fly back if I had to. With some airlines charging $100 or $200 for an unaccompanied minor, it's almost as cheap as some plane tickets. If my kid was an older teen (he's small now) I might send him on a direct flight only.
@taking_this_easy: Both the customer and the coders share the blame for sloppy requirements. But, it's mostly the customer because it's impossible to write a program without knowing exactly what it is supposed to do and the customer should know that.
It may be that the programmers didn't meet the requirements. However, the customer shares the blame on that one too because they shouldn't have taken delivery until all requirements were met.
@supercereal: I think you meant to say that whoever was instructing the programmers didn't tell them there should be two names in the system.
@SacraBos: Nope, they erred on the side of stupid. Both names were on the handwritten form, of which there were multiple copies. They paid 100 dollars (absurdly high UM fee, if you ask me) to have her be placed in a holding cell while the mother's right to pick up her own daughter was questioned. Brilliant.
@Skaperen: As an unaccompanied minor a number of years ago (about 11, I think), I was given ZERO paperwork with which to travel. My friend's mom, who was picking me up, had forgotten her ID. I had known her since I was 6 years old, and they would NOT trust my identification of her until she produced ID. They will not trust the minor to resolve the situation. Period.
@taking_this_easy: If you have a form with two names and can only put one into the computer, then this should be seen by the USER as an issue and reported to a SUPERVISOR who should pass it on to appropriate MANAGEMENT who should promptly direct PROGRAMMERS to fit the problem. Somewhere along these lines the chain was broken, and nothing was done. If Frontier is like most organizations, someone in management either didn't have the power or the will to make a solution happen.
@nybiker: I'm NOT a programmer, and I'm here to say that it's not the programmer's fault. That's like saying it's the computer's fault.
It's not. Someone wrote a set of business requirements for whatever system lists only one person, and that someone is a moron.
I'm siding with the airline. Better safe than sorry. If this post was about the airline giving the kid to an unauthorized person and now they cant find her, there'd be an uproar.
Sucks to have to wait an hour, but in the grand scheme of things, an hour isnt that long and I applaud them for even checking that the names matched.
@The-Lone-Gunman: Because they can't trust the minor in this situation. Seriously, there's never been an adult who's coerced a minor to lie for them? What if mom (or someone else the minor obviously recognized) didn't have custody and was attempting a snatch?
I agree with several of the other posters. Kudos to the airline for erring on the side of caution. Since we don't have their side of the story (were they trying to contact the originating airport for confirmation of the paperwork?) about what exactly caused the hold-up, there's no real evidence that they weren't doing everything possible to sort things out.
That being said, it's a shame the kid had to sit in a holding cell, rather than somewhere more comfortable and less scary.
@TCama: You'd need proof of custody. Because, sadly, there are plenty of kids who should be no where near their own mothers :(
As someone under 18, I never like the usage of the word "minor" to mean someone under 18. Since the word can also mean "less important," I find it demeaning and offensive.
I'm not sure the programmers can be blamed. They can't build a system that does something, unless they're told what it is the system needs to do. Programmers are supposed to build a system to meet specifications that are determined by others. To assume every programmer knows every aspect of a far-flung, multi-million dollar corporation's business and operations, is simply out of the question.
Instead of blaming it on programmers, pin the fault on those who are truly at fault: the management who both run the airline's operations as well as hire and pay the programmers to write the system that it moves on. They knew what the unaccompanied minors' procedure was ... AND they gave the system specifications to the programmers. If the latter don't reflect the former, it's not the programmers' fault.
@johnva: While you know you could do these things and I know I could do these things at the age of 13, you can't say the same thing about other peoples' kids. Somtimes it's not so much fear about them being alone in the airport but maybe you just know your kid isn't responsible enough to do what they're supposed to do (perhaps they've demonstrated this many times before). Also, you never know if someone's kid has a slight disability that doesn't allow them to be unaccompanied. Sure the letter doesn't say that but it also doesn't need to. It would be irrelevant. Frontier effed up.
@kexline: I agree. The people who write the forms tend to be different than the people who write the computer programs and I doubt they actually had a meeting when the system was being developed. However, if the programmer was instructed to create the exact same fields that are on the form and they just left one out, then I'd blame the programmer.
@mmmsoap: True. If they only had to prove guardianship (perhaps a birth certificate or some other document) then an abusive parent who has an order of protection against them could easily pick up the child who is theirs but they should not be having contact with. It's not like the airline would have that information in their system.
This is a lose-lose for the airline.
If they let the teenager go and something happened, people would be in an uproar.
Their handling of the situation was poor, but they erred on the side of the caution.
Better safe than sorry.
@Michael Norton: Are you serious? Please look up "context" and "application". If the usage of "minor", meaning "meaning a person under 18", also meant "less important" that would mean that "a person over 18" would be "major" - and it isn't. It's about context and appliation.
I say this as an editor and wordsmith.
They didn't really err on the side of caution - they f*cked up.
They had 4 copies of the paperwork at the top of the ramp. At least one or two should have gone with the girl. How hard is it to actually read the UM paperwork at the other end?
1. The capability is there to place more names in the computer system.
2. This happens quite often. One of the contact personnel who is not listed in the record is listed on the paperwork. You then have to wait until you see a name on a physical piece of paper to let someone through security (because you didn't know they had a valid purpose before).
3. Half of parents don't even show up to the gate on time, and this "holding room" is not a windowless cell either.
There is an alternative: let's just let unaccompanied minors fly at any age by themselves and see what kind of trouble they can get into without strict release guidelines. It's why IDs are checked, and paperwork is strictly adhered to. Wasting time is better than losing a child.
Ahhh, the seeing what he did there and replying with your own thing regarding seeing what was done... I see what you did there.
@taking_this_easy: Please do not blame the programmers. I am one and I have worked on projects like this. I can almost guarantee you the programmers never saw the application. Even when we ask to see those types of things we are usually not given them. We receive a set of requirements and we build things to those requirements. Unfortunately, even those of us who try to model applications to the paper form are often not allowed to.
i blame the programmers on this one...
though i'm a programmer myself... these kinds of situations usually happen because the programmer isn't familiar with the 'real-life' problems that arise...