Oops we did it again. United misplaces a child in Chicago

Less than two months after Delta Airlines accidentally swapped unaccompanied minors connecting at Minneapolis, United Air Lines simply forgot about a child connecting in Chicago.

One thing about embarrassing mistakes that get a lot of publicity, usually everyone is extra careful for a while until they forget and go back to normal behavior.

After, for example, stories of injuries from turbulence, passengers are more likely to keep their seat belts fastened. (It’s the same with updating earthquake kits after a major tremor.)

But this heightened caution is not apparently always true for the airline industry.

The young man in question, 9 years old, was traveling from San Francisco to Ottawa, Canada, with a stopover in Chicago.

Apparently someone from the airline escorted him to the room they have for unaccompanied minors, but no one arrived to pick him up.

No one noticed the mistake and who knows how long it would have taken, had the child not called his mother on his cell-phone, after his ticketed flight had landed in Ottawa.

This was EIGHT hours after he had landed in Chicago.

Now the connecting flight was United Express, in this case operated by Trans States Airlines — many frequent fliers have learned to hate any airline that flies under that banner.

(While United Express encompasses many different small carriers, they all share the characteristics of small planes, cramped seats, limited at best food and beverage; and ontime records that make United itself look good.)

But even so, this incident seems to defy belief. First, we’ve all been on flights where someone has checked in but not boarded.

In those cases, the plane just generally sits until they locate the person, and/or take his/her luggage off the plane. Especially when it’s an international flight, as this one was.

Second, while the flight from San Francisco to Chicago was a 747, the United Express flight he was booked on had a maximum capacity of 50 people. This is not exactly a huge plane. Passenger manifests list unaccompanied minors. You would think a flight attendant might notice.

Ditto you might think someone in the children’s room at O’Hare might notice a child being there for a very long time. (Though to be fair on this one, I can imagine the room being relatively full and chaotic in July.)

I wrote a Consumer Traveler post with a few tips after Delta accidentally swapped the children in June and those still apply.

Another tip for connecting flights might to be sure the child has a watch – set to the time in the connecting city or a cell phone that will give them the time. (If an alarm can be set to the tentative boarding time for the second flight, even better.)

It still boggles the imagination how the boy didn’t realize there was a problem for eight hours, but then children often do not have great senses of time, particularly if computer games or videos are involved. According to the Chicago Tribune, the boy spent his time watching videos provided by the airline over and over.

Also according to the Tribune article, he was told repeatedly that his flight was delayed. It is true that there were thunderstorms which did delay his original flight, but only by about an hour.

No one will ever know exactly what happened. My sense — this is just another example of a airline system that is increasingly automated, which thus is increasingly prone to breakdown under stress.

In fact, when the child finally reached his mother and she had him pass the phone to a United attendant, the woman allegedly seemed flustered and upset about her own day being ruined by the weather and “awful children.”

Fortunately, however, the last flight of the day had not left yet at this point, and the boy did end up making it to Ottawa, after 11 p.m. at night. Apparently United is refunding their accompanied minor fee, for starters.

I am not without some sympathy for airline personnel in these kind of situations, but it seems to me United and other airlines need to start thinking about either increasing staffing to a level where they can handle weather and other delay problems, or simply stop making promises they can’t keep.

And yes, this could mean not accepting unaccompanied minors on connections. For years, Southwest simply refused pets to avoid liability issues, and the airline still only allows children under 12 traveling alone on nonstop or direct (stops without changes) flights only.

In both the recent Delta case and this month’s United case, there was no permanent harm done, although years from now the then grown-up children might tell a psychiatrist differently. But you have to wonder, if the airlines don’t get their act together, who knows what could happen next time?