About a month ago, we wrote about an airline serving an unaccompanied minor a large cup of coffee. If you thought that was reckless behavior, you are going to be outraged by what Continental Airlines did to a minor traveling under their supervision.
The airline had been paid to accompany a ten year old on a flight from Boston to Cleveland, a pretty simple task, especially since this is just a 45 minute flight.
Sadly, the airline staff are apparently not capable of reading signs, because they put this poor girl on the wrong flight.
Instead of flying to Cleveland, Continental Airlines flew her to Newark. To add insult to injury, they then called her grandparents asking them to come pick her up, even though their paperwork showed an Ohio address and they were calling an Ohio phone number.
It took Continental Airlines 45 minutes to discover their terrible mistake, helped by the fact that 2 grandparents were at an airport to pick up a child who was actually 450 miles away.
Continental refunded the unaccompanied minor fee, and put the kid on a plane to Cleveland within an hour. The whole story boggles the mind – they put a kid on the wrong plane, nobody noticed an extra passenger on the wrong plane, nobody noticed a missing minor on the correct flight, and nobody noticed they had received a ten year old girl at an airport where she was not supposed to be.
As always, this is just one side of the story, hopefully we’ll get a response from Continental Airlines telling their side of the story.
%Gallery-51812%
**Update!!** According to the Boston Globe, it now appears that two unaccompanied minors were lost by Continental Airlines! One young woman was accidentally sent to Fayetteville, Arkansas instead of Charlotte, NC while the other was sent to Cleveland instead of Newark. Whether these happened on the same day at the same gate is unclear right now — the Globe seems to have conflicting statements — but to have lost two minors over any period is surely a disaster!
(Via Consumerist.com)