United "loses" 10-year-old girl on flight

One can only assume the vast majority of that mileage was logged before the mega-merger with Continental.

It remains to be seen whether or not the combined companies will equal a great deal less than the sum of their parts.

 

Do you fly through O'Hare? I had years where I would routinely fly around 75,000 miles and most of it would be fine. But if it was United through O'Hare, it was the biggest joke of all-time.

 

From ages 4-12 I flew all the time with my brother (who was 4 years older) from New York to LA. But those were a very, very different times for the airlines. They make no money and outsource every single thing that they can. Not that this makes the behavior correct in the least, but the .

One thing I think is a little strange is that usually if you are a passenger with special needs (like a child flying solo), the flight staff makes you wait on the plane and then does a handoff to the next people responsible.

 

Cheap flights and "being treated like royalty" do not mesh.

Gotta pick one. We picked cheap flights. And there is a whole industry of websites insuring that we get that damn lowest price possible.

Orbitz and Expedia and Kayak don't let you filter your choices on "best service."

 

United is, hands down, the absolute worst major airline in this country. I think they make their employees take a class called Asshole 101. Surliest group of airline employees by a mile.

 

Very good point.

 

Holy shit is that an unbelievable story.

And a small bit of advice to United: When doing customer service training for Harold and Kumar over in Delhi, you might want to tell them that - when dealing with the next parent of a child you're going to lose - the words “it does not matter” are absolutely not an acceptable answer to any question.

I don't have kids and I'm so mad about what they did to these people that I'm shaking.

 

This kid's father is a fucking United Premier member and they still fucked the family sideways. If he was just an average traveler his kid probably winds up in Kabul and her luggage gets shipped to Shanghai.

 

I'm not sure that needs to be true.

Maybe not "royalty," but customers on discount lines like Southwest and JetBlue and Virgin and Air Berlin are at least treated like human beings.

And there remain plenty of full fare airlines - Lufthansa, etc. - with fantastically high levels of service.

 

I'm thinking there might be an interesting investigative piece begging to be written about the company United outsources its child traveler program to. I doubt they're the only airline that does this and I'm guessing they all go with the low bid.

 

I can see this turning into a series of United horror stories, so here's mine:

About 20 years ago I was booked on a United flight from Newark to SF. First, we have a maintenance issue that was supposed to be addressed while the plane was sitting there overnight (at least that's what the pilot claimed), so this puts us an hour behind schedule. After we finally back away from the gate, it takes us 30 minutes to sit in line during morning rush hour and then they change departing aircraft to the other end of the runway. As we're taxiing there someone realizes we have too much weight, and for some reason I never have been able to comprehend, we can't unload some cargo unless we go to the same gate we'd left, but in the meantime another arriving aircraft has pulled into that gate. We eventually wait for that plane to leave, and as we're taking care of our excess cargo, the crew realizes it can't fly because they will have too many hours that day. So they all leave the airport. We eventually round up another crew and finally depart Newark about six hours after we were originally scheduled to have landed in California. I vowed that day I would never give United another dime of my money and haven't except for one time when I had no choice during a family emergency.

 

1. Maybe the worst customer service I have ever seen from a large corporation.
2. Phoebe is a pretty brave 10 year old. My daughter at 10 would have been a complete basket case.
3. That is a very well-written letter by mom. Clear, concise. 1000x better than the reporter's story. Mom could write somewhere.