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I think their compensation is reasonable.
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@Daniel Parmelee: It sounds reasonable to me as well, provided that the little girl is OK. If she has any sort of ongoing discomfort about being away from her parents, the airline should toss in some therapy money.
I'd say even if they DO investigate, the chances of it happening again are rare. I mean, I don't know the figures, but I am guessing the amount of times things like this happen are rare. In no system can you ever make it 100% possible nothing will fail/go wrong. I mean, we had a horse come off a trailer, and within one minute of getting into a stall, put his foot through a stall gate and get wedged. Luckily my neighbor had a pair of Linesmans Pliers and cut through the gate enough to release the horses foot. We have since then kept a pair of bolt cutters in both barns, but as I have said, even after I bought and installed them of my own initiative, the chances of it happening a second time are remote.
This problem obviously isn't rare enough, as it actually happened twice this weekend. A kid flying from Houston to North Caronlina ended up in Arkansas instead.
@locura79: Ahhhh, according to that article, it was a carrier working for Continental. THERE is where your problem probably starts. If so, then yes, re-train the carrier.
@TripleTheOrder_GitEmSteveDave: What you really ought to do is train the horses to use the bolt cutters. A little self-help never hurt.
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She doesn't get to visit the pilots and get a jr pilot wings pin? This is NOT ENOUGH.
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@Skeetz: I worked alongside Continental for a year and a half and couldn't get a set of wings. One of their agents did attach a \"heavy\" tag to me at one point though.
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@TripleTheOrder_GitEmSteveDave: Or if she enjoys it when her dog gets up against her leg and rubs up and down.
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Nope, not enough. Continental has already failed if this is the NEW response after taking a small beating in the \"court of public opinion\" after their initial response.
You should not have had to be embarrassed in to your more recent resolution continental.
@axiomatic:
I think the first time they were dealing with lower level employees at the Cleveland airport who wouldn't have the authority to offer something like this. And I think we're assuming that what they offered in Cleveland (refund of unaccompanied child fee) was ALL they were going to offer, which may not have been true.
@Cant_stop_the_rock: If what you say is true then I stand corrected. But the wording \"Continental Airlines has made a much more generous offer to the family\" leads me to believe that there was a previous offer that was unacceptable... so why don't you all put the rope away and stop trying to get me to hang myself?
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@axiomatic: This only happened yesterday. I don't think this is a \"new resolution,\" it's just the actual response finally swinging into gear.
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@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?
I don't think that's nearly enough, but I don't know what exactly WOULD be though. When I was 16 with 105 degree fever flying into LAX from New Zealand coming back from an exchange program, United was supposed to hand walk me to the next gate for my connecting flight and instead I wandered around LAX for a couple of hours until I passed out and woke up on a couch in the back of a United break room. I didn't get squat.
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@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.
@John Henschen: I guess they didn't know about your issue when they responded to this lost child incident.
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So... I can put down my torch now? Maybe on the Continental kiosk?
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)
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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.
@socalrob: I imagine it's probably pretty scary when you put your child on a flight, when she is suppposed to arrive you call the people picking her up, who then respond, \"she never got here\"...
Scary stuffs. Imagine what they could have been thinking, did someone take her?
Investigation seems so unnecessary. Stuff like this is a mistake; they happen in any industry. An investigation would only waste the taxpayers' money and tarnish the reputation of a company which appears to be doing everything within its power, short of lifetime free flights, to rectify its mistake.
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I would say this is about as good as can be expected. Problems come up and while it is a shame that this was an issue and shouldn't happened, this is a reasonable response to it. In some peoples opinions there will not be anything that would be enough. I personally think this is adequate.
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I don't personally care for Continental, but sounds like they're responding in a reasonable manner. Sure, they should try to investigate what went wrong and fix it, but mistakes do happen. Once a mistake happens, the best you can do is try to fix it, make up for it, and prevent it in the future.
'tis a pity that only public outcry can get these corporations to care about customer service.
I'm completely failing to understand the total freakout about this incident. The kid should have gone from Boston to Cleveland. Instead the kid goes to Newark. Continental probably has a half-dozen BOS-CLE flights each day--just get the kid on the the next one.
@bilge: Forget about BOS-CLE. How many EWR-CLE flights do they have, give that they are both hub cities?
@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.
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@bilge: How's this for a freakout?
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.
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@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?
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@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?
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This isn't a bad offer.@bilge: If you read the original article, in their original response to the situation, they didn't offer to fly the kid to Cleveland, they just called the in-laws in Cleveland and said \"Come get your minor in Newark\", then the in-laws had to fly to Newark to pick her up.
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?
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@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: I guess you are not a parent, aunt, uncle or grandparent?
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.
@bilge: You've paid a babysitter to take care of your child. You call the babysitter. The babysitter doesn't have the child and doesn't know where the kid is. I think that's a legitimate cause for a freakout.
Parents get a security pass, walk their child to the gate, ensure that the child goes to the right plane, wait til the plane takes off then leaves. Done it many times.
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.
If this had been their FIRST response, along with a real apology, I'd say it's enough. After their INCREDIBLY douchey initial response, though, nothing short of lifetime free flights will suffice. And a large cash payment, too, thanks very much. I know it's more than what's really warranted, but after their initial offer (refunding child's transfer fee) I want them to really suffer.
@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.
@takes_so_little: How about they give the child the aircraft that transported her to the wrong destination?
@HiPwr: Hmm... acceptable. According to the governor of Alaska, aircraft can be sold on ebay with tremendous results.
Sounds like a reasonable offer to me. I doubt they'd get very far with a lawsuit, and a lawsuit would look like an attempt to cash in.
@Cant_stop_the_rock: Worse, it would keep the incident fresh in the mind of the child for years, potentially, while the suit dragged on.
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.
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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.
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@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.
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@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!
@roshambo: I really don't think the flight attendants pay much attention, and frequent flyers don't either. We had our corporate VP (Fortune 200)end up on the wrong plane because the towns were the same. His assistant booked the wrong flight, he got on it, and ended up in the wrong state. Considering he made that flight at least 4 times a year, you'd think he would have noticed that everything seemed wrong and different, but no.
@roshambo: I will make a guess and say that if nothing else the ridiculous gate changes cause this. There have been several times where I have had a gate change that was not shown at the gate (so the wall monitors would have it but none of the displays you show that you are no longer leaving out of that gate). It is also pretty easy to get on the wrong plane when you are at an airport that requires you to walk outside to the plane.
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It sounds to me like they are taking it seriously. This is a really good effort to make amends as long as they really do make sure it doesn't happen again. I doubt they would have done this if the news hadn't gotten out.
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.
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It placates the family but doesn't address the security issue that two flights took off with incorrect passenger counts.
@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.
@IfThenElvis: Maybe there's a Newark guy in Cleveland kicking himself for being so stupid :). If not, yeah, that's a problem.
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The title should probably be changed to \"Continental Offers Free Flights, Frequent-Flyer Status To The Family Of Misrouted Child\" to avoid confusion.
Not enough. The GA's, the FA's, the CSR's, all of the jokers in between that bungled that one, needs to be retrained from Step One in their little training handbook. They dropped the ball big time on this one and there really is no excuse for that.
They have three options to go on this one.
Retrain,
Reassign,
Resign.
Take your pick staffers, your fate is in your hands.
@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.
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I think it's reasonable. And while I think it's screwed up what happened, I also realize that human error happens. Now if it was a regular occurrance and they weren't really doing anything about it to train their staff better, I wouldn't feel so.
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@synergy: Besides the later story where the same airline did the same thing in Houston, consider this: two airplane employees separately broke FAA regulations by not checking their passenger manifests, plus a third employee put the girl on the wrong plane in the first place. A fourth employee blithely called the grandparents without realizing that the girl was in the wrong place. A CSR offered a pathetic compensation instead of actually taking the problem seriously, and it took media attention for Continental to take notice.
I think it's more than just human error when the problem was at all levels of the system.
@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.
The Houston Chronicle is now reporting that Continental misplaced TWO different children on flights, both run by ExpressJet: The Boston to Cleveland debacle, and an 8 year old going from Houston to Charlotte, who wound up in Arkansas. I believe these were within 24 hours of each other, too! http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6483198.html
Probably the most traumatic part of the entire experience is that the little girl had to spend time in Newark, the Garden Spot of the Garden State. In all seriousness, the compensation seems fair as long as the little girl is all right. Ten years old is still young enough to be badly frightened by something that a 16-year-old would take in stride. If counseling is required, Continental should pick up the tab.
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.
I was kind of supportive of this guy, but then he took it upon himself to tip off every media outlet he could of his story.
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.
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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?
If Kamens hadn't pursued this story and blogged about it, would anyone have known that Continental pulled the EXACT SAME \"lose a child\" stunt only one day before Kamen's daughter was placed on the wrong flight?
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.
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It's not enough. I say that because the penalty for a failure of this sort needs to be severe enough to encourage the company to take steps to assure it doesn't happen again. It did happen again. Therefore the negative outcome of the first occurance was not sufficient to motivate the company to change its child-misdirecting ways.
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the investigation will be \"taken very seriously\"