@roshambo:
I got caught on the wrong flight when the gate attendant (ATL) announced my city/flight home in error. Seeing as how it was my first experience flying and I was about 4.5 mos pregnant (preggo brain), I thought "gee a bit early but OK, whatever." I got up, got through the gate, and after 10 minutes on the plane and lots of confusion on all parts, Delta came and fished me off the plane before it took off.

I could not even begin to imagine that happening to a kid flying solo; scary stuff.

@johnmc: Six on a regular basis. CO 625, 525, 325, 225, 825, and 86. It appears that the kid went on CO 325 based on info from the original blog post.

I think it's more than just human error when the problem was at all levels of the system.

@roshambo: In 2006 I flew Milan (Malpensa, T2) to Sharm el Sheikh on a charter flight as part of a packaged tour. We left really early in the morning; I recall having to check in at 4:30 am. At no point prior to my boarding the plane did they announce there was a stopover in Luxor. It wasn't written on the screen by the boarding gate and it wasn't announced at the beginning of the flight, in any language. When the plane touched down in Luxor, the flight attendants welcomed us to Sharm el Sheikh. Some people got off the plane, some didn't. As we were landing, I hadn't seen anything that looked like the Red Sea, so I stayed in my seat. I just couldn't understand how we could possibly be in Sharm. A good fifteen or twenty minutes later the pilot made an annoucement saying we were actually in Luxor, not Sharm. Someone told the flight attendants that they'd announced we were in Sharm, they panicked for a while, ran off the plane, and eventually came back looking quite upset. I assume some people got off the plane who should have stayed on. We waited around a while, took off, flew to Sharm and, I swear to God, when we got there the flight attendants announced that we had arrived in Luxor- without a hint of irony! They were truly that useless!

Continental misrouted 2 unaccompanied minors on two consecutive days! And you don't think this is media-worthy?

Kamens is performing a valuable public service. Kudos to him for bringing this to the media's attention and bringing the harsh glare of bad publicity on Continental's practices.

Little girl gets off the plane because maybe she doesn't realize she's at the wrong airport. The missing babysitter that they paid extra for is nowhere in sight. She wanders along through the airport, looking for grandparents who aren't there because she's in the wrong city. An opportunistic pedophile realizes that he's got a lost little girl right there in front of him, goes to her, and pretends to be someone from the airlines taking her to meet her grandparents. She vanishes, forever.

Why the freakout? Because the carelessness of underpaid and overstressed airline employees could've cost the life of a child, that's why. If it were me, I'd hamstring Continental, despite their "generous" offer to the child and family. My kid's welfare and life is worth way more than the pittance they offered. It's not about making money off of an almost-tragedy; it's about teaching an irresponsible corporation a lesson.

I'm SHOCKED Continental didn't force the parents to buy a last minute ticket to the final destination for full fare. Isn't this how they like to do things now?

There's something disingenuous about that. It's one thing to blog about it and let it go viral. It's another if you become your own PR firm in what was essentially a mistake.

[www.chron.com]

Just a thought for minors traveling alone...why not use a gps bracelet that goes on at the departing terminal and is removed at the receiving terminal so someone always has track of the child. They're not that expensive and there probably are fewer solo child flights than one would think.

@IfThenElvis: It placates the family but doesn't address the security issue that two flights took off with incorrect passenger counts.

Good point! I feel safer by the second.

@synergy: train their staff better

Un yeah. Train union workers to the point that they actually do somthing right most of the time? heh it would be easier and cheaper to invent and build robots to work in the airports.

@Nighthawke: Retrain,

Reassign,

Resign.

Are you kidding? They did not lose her forever or kill her, which means they got their job atleast 50% right. These are union workers we are talking about. When you are dealing with union workers that a) actually DO anything. and b) do atleast half of it right. You are talking about the top 1% of union workers. The options here are promote, promote with raise, promote with bonus and raise.

HiPwr: **hugs**

They have three options to go on this one.

Retrain,

Reassign,

Resign.

Take your pick staffers, your fate is in your hands.

@IfThenElvis: Maybe there's a Newark guy in Cleveland kicking himself for being so stupid :). If not, yeah, that's a problem.

@takes_so_little: I'm assuming a low-level employee offered that. They don't exactly have the power to do what ended up being offered. Still should not have happened, but the end result is adequate.

@humphrmi: I don't think that was their intent. I think the Newark crew thought the kid was supposed to be there. From the original article, there was no mention of the city-they went to the gate, their kid wasn't there. Newark looks around, no parents. It took a bit to figure out what went wrong-then they offered to fly the kid to the correct destination and refund the fee-about all a low level employee could do. The powers higher up added this package to the deal after hearing of their screwup.

@bilge: You're a douche. There. I said it. The guy's kid didn't get off the plane she was supposed to get off of, she was alone in a city she wasn't supposed to be in...and probably scared. How would you feel if your overinflated sense of self worth ended up in stranded in Newark?

@John Henschen: Personally, I find foot walking to be much simpler. I can't imagine walking around an airport on my hands with a 105 degree fever. Really, you only have yourself to blame.

@takes_so_little: How about they give the child the aircraft that transported her to the wrong destination?

@axiomatic: You've been swinging since 3:37 PM.

@bilge: People freakout when a package is misdelivered - how are you supposed to feel when YOUR CHILD is sent to the wrong city and state?

How did it happen though? Every time I fly a regional jet my ticket always gets checked again when I get on the jet, not just at the gate.

Yes, it was a HUGE mistake, but you have to let the kid move on so she is frightened of being without her parents for the rest of her childhood.

The compensation seems decent. On the other hand, I have always wondered how people end up on the wrong plane in the first place. I have been on a flight before where we were going from SF to Buffalo via Vegas and sure enough after we push away, there is a lady on the flight that should be going to Phoenix and not be on this plane. I don't get how they get there in the first place? I mean they check your tickets and sometimes even scan them, they announce the flight and the destination numerous times before you board and once your on. How do people get to where they are past the point of no return? I mean it just seems like massive fail on both the consummer and airlines side. With this incident being a child it is a bit different but it is just something that I know happens often enough yet I have just never understood.

Continental probably has a half-dozen BOS-CLE flights each day--just get the kid on the the next one.

Umm, how does a BOS-CLE flight help her when she's in Newark?

Continental's fault? not really The parent wasn't paying the child premium. Bottom line, the parent needs to take the responsibility for their child. You are still handing them over to a total stranger. Just because they wear a uniform doesn't mean they have functional brain cells.

The one thing I see Continental doing VERY VERY wrong is getting the boarding pass and not reading ALL THE WORDS and allowing the child to board the wrong plane. Readers are leaders!!! But if the parent was there, they should be aware of gate 1A vs 1B and said something.

It's extremely panicking to not know where your child is. For the hours that Continental didn't realize there was a problem, NO ONE knew where this child was and there was no guarantee that she was safe or even supervised.

Also, it's tough enough for a child to entertain themselves and behave for a short flight. Spending probably 6 hours on planes and in airports had to have been a challenge even if the kid wasn't worried/scared.

It could also have potentially been highly distressing to the child to end up in the wrong city.

I had my niece flown to me once when she was 6, and she was quite upset that her flight had taken 3 hours instead of 40 minutes (it was delayed). She had been 'promised' she'd only be on her own for 40 minutes, and got worried when it took longer. Kids are really never alone, so it does worry them.

So many things could have gone wrong in this scenario. It's fantastic that everyone seems to have emerged unscathed, but no one knew where this little girl was for hours.

@axiomatic: That's not a viable resolution. They don't have a time machine, so what do you suggest would be a reasonable response NOW?

@John Henschen: I guess they didn't know about your issue when they responded to this lost child incident.

@axiomatic: What would be your resolution?

Scary stuffs. Imagine what they could have been thinking, did someone take her?

They are going above and beyond. The girl was safely cared for in the first place even though she was mis-routed. So safety wasn't too much of an issue. Throwing in the in-laws tickets as well as the frequent flyer status is a bonus.

At least in my book, but I don't have children, so can't compare there.

Seriously, this seems a very good gesture on Continental's part. Not to mention they nipped it in the bud before it became an impossibly huge PR gaffe. (Not that it wasn't already a huge gaffe, but doing nothing or doing something insufficient would have just made it worse)

@Daniel Parmelee: Agreed.

You should not have had to be embarrassed in to your more recent resolution continental.

She doesn't get to visit the pilots and get a jr pilot wings pin? This is NOT ENOUGH.