Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? United put a little boy on a flight to Dusseldorf instead of Stockholm. But the reality is a bit more complicated, of course.
I’ve taken a day to gather the facts and offer this timeline of events that helps to put situation in context.
- A mother booked an SAS ticket for her 14-year-old son from Raleigh-Durham (RDU) – Newark (EWR) – Stockholm (ARN), with the first segment operated by United and the second by SAS.
- SAS’s unaccompanied minor policy states that children aged 12-17 can travel alone.
- United’s unaccompanied minor policy states that children must be at least age 15 to travel alone.
- At check-in in RDU, the mother was informed that her son could not travel alone to Newark due to United’s policy.
- But there was another issue – according to united.com, unaccompanied minors are not permitted to make international connections on non-United flights.
- An exception was made due the nature of the circumstances
- United charged the mother $150, the standard fee for its unaccompanied minor service
- In Newark, the boy landed in Terminal C and was escorted to Terminal B, where the SAS flight was scheduled to depart from Gate B65
- At the gate, United turned over the boy to the custody of the contract staff jointly handling gate operations for SAS and Eurowings
- A gate change occurred and the Eurowings flight was now departing from B65
- Ground staff handed the boy the boarding pass of another passenger, and he took his seat onboard.
- The passenger actually assigned to his seat showed up, but said nothing and took the open seat next to him
- As the plane pushed back, the boy himself realized he was on the wrong flight and called his mother.
- The boy alerted the flight attendants that he was on the wrong flight
- Notifying the captain, the aircraft returned to the gate and the boy was offloaded
- By this time, his SAS flight had already departed, so he was booked on a later SAS flight to Copenhagen with a connection to Stockholm
- United claims it reached out to the mother
- The mother claims United never reached out
- United refunded the $150 unaccompanied minor fee
A lot of mistakes here, weren’t there? Certainly United is not absolved of all blame if it was tasked with ensuring the boy made his connection and did not notice the last-minute gate change for the SAS flight.
At the same time, did the SAS/Eurowings staff not even bother to look at the boy’s boarding pass or passport? Why was he handed the boarding pass of another passenger? Why didn’t the gate reader beep when the actual passenger tried to board with the same assignment? I reached out to Eurowings for clarification and did not hear back.
United did tell me:
The safety and well-being of all of our customers is our top priority, and we have been in frequent contact with the young man’s family to confirm his safety and to apologize for this issue. Once Eurowings recognized that he had boarded the wrong aircraft in Newark, the plane returned to the gate – before taking off. Our staff then assisted the young customer to ensure that he boarded the correct rebooked flight later that evening. We have confirmed that this young customer safely reached his destination.
All’s well that ends well, I suppose. It will be something the boy can laugh about one day. Good thing he had the sense to alert the flight crew when he heard all the German…Eurowings offers a far inferior product to SAS in economy!
Lastly, I think SAS has a far better unaccompanied minor policy than United concerning age limits. 14 years old is an age I felt fully comfortable traveling alone. I don’t think the boy would have boarded the wrong flight on his own, even with the gate change. Perhaps United should consider letting young teenagers fly alone.
CONCLUSION
Rules exist due to best general practices, not because they are necessarily best in a particular situation. If the United agent was going to make an exception in RDU, perhaps the boy should just have been allowed to fly alone in the first place.
image: United
OMG UA really dragged itself off the plane here! Just deny boarding you numbskulls! Mommy should either fire her TA or read more carefully next time. Intl travel is not for the faint of heart.
Anyways, the story I heard was that the EW GA paged a pax with a similar sounding name so the contracted helper thought the kid belonged on that flight. Of course, the GA should have verified his passport (esp. for an intl flight see above) but whatever. Mistakes happen. I’ve been given the wrong BP. I’m sure we all have. Occasionally GAs lift by seq number instead of scanning :O I agree that UA took on responsibility by accepting the kid but much like Daogate, it wasn’t their fault. They didn’t change the SK gate or page the other pax or fail to check docs. Blame the contractor. Just my 56 cents.
At 14, the kid had the sense to know he was on the wrong flight. I suspect that he had doubts and wasn’t fast enough. As an adult, I boarded the wrong flight where the flight left from a circular rotunda (concourse) but realized it early enough to get of the plane.
I was once several years younger than that kid when my connection was cancelled. The airline arranged for a flight the next day. They provided a hotel. However, they didn’t explain anything. The man simply asked “can you read?”. After I said “yes”, he gave me a hotel voucher and a sheet with information about the new flight. I had a blast! In retrospect, I should have done more. Rather than stay in the hotel and be safe, I should have gone to town and been a tourist.
When I have kids, I’m going to do the see one, do one method of teaching. I’ll show the kid how to travel. The next time, I’ll have the kid lead the way. Before you know it, the kid will be sharper than me and know all the tricks, including credit card sign up bonuses.
If the kid needs a see one, see another, try parts of being independent, that’s ok, too.
The 14yr old has to take more blame here.
Why did they take a boarding pass, look at it enough to see the seat number but not the totally different name and not at least query it with the GA?
Why did they go down a jet bridge with a flight going to somewhere they clearly weren’t expecting to go without checking it was the right flight?
14 year olds in the vast majority of cases should be capable of this. And if they aren’t their parents should be aware their kid isn’t okay on their own.
Also, on the GA behalf, how are they giving out boarding passes without ID checks?
Ummm, no.
Read between the lines, please. What do you think really happen? This young passenger having the contract full and undivided attention, and have an hour to leisurely reading the boarding pass, and no one else rushing, and peace prevailing? Oh, can you also add in unicorns and rainbows and caviar, please!
Of course not.
Here is what I guess actually happened on the ground. remember, we are talking about 2 transatlantic flights changing gates. There were probably 14 other families rushing around trying to get something. The contractor probably handled about 20 other tasks at the same time. Didn’t Kyle mention gate change?
The young passenger was probably not “handed” the boarding pass. Rather, the contractor probably point to a spot on the pass, saying “your seat is this ,go go go go.” Guess what other passengers were doing? Giving way and checking up? No! Pushing and “can you please go faster” and “hey, there is space in front of you”, of course.
I also guessed that when the true owner of the seat showed up (probably late, that’s why the contractor had that boarding pass), they chatted and the poor minor finally looked at the boarding pass properly.
Look, UA was paid *because* the passenger was minor, probably confused and worried. Please stop blaming the victim. Oh, or are you one of those ***es who demanded the poor boy to apologise?
I have to agree with you.
I flew UA once, many years ago and was grateful my parents had walked me through things. It was a US flight, so not as complicated, but there were tons of kids this one person had to handle(there were, I believe 7 of us who all had to be at different gates within 30 minutes, which she kept mentioning over and over). She rushed us back and forth without any plan. We passed some gates kids needed because she didn’t think it was efficient to stop before walking distances back and forth.
My dad had told me to just follow what they say and that the people would make sure I would get home, but to also pay attention. I learned later he and my mom where on tether hooks the whole time(this was before anyone had a cell phone), but I had been through an airport before, I was attending camp, and my father wanted me to learn independence.
The UM people told me the wrong gate from the start(I didn’t know that at the time) and we got there and I said, “this is the wrong gate.” The woman was very insistent and tried to pawn me off and I said, “but I’m not going to x, I’m going to y.” She stopped and looked at my boarding pass and the gate and huffed off telling us to all follow her.
I never actually had control of my boarding pass, even when I asked for it. They told me they didn’t want me to lose it. When you are a child and an adult is rushing you around, especially when two flights were boarding simultaneously in the same area, I would say it would be easy to be flustered. He did what he was supposed to and told a FA and then called his mother.
These instances like this are why most airlines have adopted much more stringent policies on UM’s as a whole. They used to be Llowed on connecting flights but not the last flight of the day.
Then it was modified to non-stop only flights. Just like the “Compassion fares” and Emotional Support Animals the policies are being abused to the point where it will be much more Politically Correct to just refuse carriage of UM’s completely! Anybody up for starting a “Child Escort Service” Daddy and Mommy pay another adult to get their little Darling to their destination al la “Transporter Movies”?
Of course at age of an adult at 18 One is not able to get a Hotel nor rent a car so what then?
Would THAT be the airline’s, bus companie’s, rail carrier’ responsibility too? Where would One draw the New Line?
According to your timeline the gate change happened AFTER United turned the unaccompanied minor over to SAS. So, how is United responsible for not noticing ‘the last minute gate change?’
I imagine this is exactly why UA had a policy that would have prevented this in the first place. Regardless whether people agree with it or not, UA management weighed risks (and probably years of data and incidents) and decided it was not worth the risk to allow a connection. And they set up their operation to handle situations that were within the policy.
This is where it gets tricky in the balance between asking employees to strictly adhere to policy and giving frontline employees the judgment to make policy exceptions depending on circumstances. Frontline agents are not privy to all of the analysis, risk assessment, and debate that went into making a policy, and so therefore is likely to under appreciate the risks and consequences of the policy exception going south. And in this case, with UA’s recent history, bad press is significantly amplified by all the major news outlets covering these kinds of stories.
I think a big gap has been uncovered here that SAS sold a ticket with a UA segment that was outside UA’s policy. That linkage needs to be fixed.
That my friend is the correct analysis. Now ….we call this ….preventative action to prevent recurrence.
Isn’t it stated that SAS allow unaccompanied minors to travel from age 12-17? At least United Airlines make the requirement of 15 years of age. Did the author make a mistake when he wrote that United should look at the unaccompanied minors policy again. I think United did their job and finished when they handed over to SAS agent. United also followed up and make sure that the boy get to the later flight and on his way to destination. Which was supposed to be SAS/Eurowing responsibility.
Matthew, can you please clarify something. On her TV interview for this story, the mother kept saying that after her son called her about the mixup, she couldn’t reach United. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she called United and was routed to an offshore call center where she sat on hold for a long time. But being pessimistic, I wonder if she really even tried to call United. Sorry, but the interview just seemed a bit off. Anyway, glad this ended well.
Could you pls delete my last name from that post.
Assuming you are Bill?
No, I am Terry. I wrote a post that was under moderation when I realized that my last name wasn’t scrubbed off.
Happy 4th.
United has the most restrictive UM policy of the big three. Most other international airlines allow children to travel alone at 12.
Most children to travel alone at 12