Continental Airlines Boeing 737
Continental Airlines made a little mistake with sending a ten year old girl to Newark, when her grandparents were waiting for her in Cleveland.
Her grandparents called her father asking where she was when she didn’t get off the plane. For 45 long minutes the father was panicked trying to track down the location of his daughter, until discovering Continental had escorted her to the wrong airport.
Continental states that there were two flights leaving from the same doorway and miscommunication led to the girl being placed on the wrong flight. When the mistake was uncovered, the girl was placed on another plane and sent safely to her grandparents.
Continental offered to waive the $75 unaccompanied minor fee, but the father stated, “You can bet they’ll be refunding a lot more than that fee by the time I’m done with them. My father-in-law laughed when they made the offer, it was so outrageous.”
Certainly mistakes like this happen, but it seems like airlines should be ready to bend over backwards to make things right with the affected family, if for no other reason than to avoid bad publicity like they’re getting.
UPDATE: It turns out that Continental did this TWICE this weekend. They put an 8yr old girl on a wrong flight as well. Read more…
Source: WCVB Image: code20photog
That poor child! Newark Airport is scary and confusing for adults. It must have been much more so for a young child. It’s hard to understand how a mistake like this could be made. Just goes to show how little attention the airline employees pay to this added responsibility. I wonder if any of this $75 fee actually goes to the person who takes care of the child.