Help! United left my 13-year-old daughter in Syracuse

December 24, 2012

What does United Airlines’ unaccompanied minor fee cover? Katrina Cichosz wants to know, and after reviewing her case, I’m kind of curious, too.

Let’s go right to the textbook definition, which is on United’s website. When her 13-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, flew home for Thanksgiving on Nov. 21, she had the option of paying the $99 fee to cover “the extra handling required” for managing a child’s travel, but technically, she didn’t have to.

She was scheduled to fly on United flight 4799 from Syracuse, NY, to Cleveland, which is scheduled to depart at 6:05 a.m. The night before, her daughter and her daughter’s father received a notification that the flight would be delayed by two hours. They still arrived at the airport with plenty of time to board the flight for its original departure, getting to the airport at 4:20 a.m.

Now, you have to remember — it’s Nov. 21, which is one of the busiest air travel days of the year. The terminal was crowded. Father and daughter stood in a long line to check in and then paid the $99 UM fee.

At 5:50 a.m., just after they had passed through security, they heard their names being paged.

They ran to the gate and reached it within that same minute. When they arrived at the gate, a United employee told them they had missed boarding by four minutes.

The plane door was still open and the walkway was still at the plane’s door. My daughter was crying and the employee still wouldn’t let her on and told them to wait to be helped for another flight.

Turns out the aircraft wasn’t delayed, and even though the family arrived on time, they still missed their boarding because of the long lines. Oh, and one other thing: Their flight was completely full, and when her daughter didn’t show up for boarding, United gave her seat to a standby passenger.

Gabrielle caught a flight the next day, for which United didn’t charge her, but Cichosz is unhappy. She paid $1,600 for the ticket, plus an additional $99, to get her daughter home for Thanksgiving. Instead, she spent the better part of the day on the phone with United, trying to get her daughter home. If her father didn’t live nearby, Gabrielle would have truly been stranded in Syracuse.

She wonders,

Why was her seat given away to a standby person, when the UM fee had been paid that morning and she was checked in at the ticket counter? Didn’t that mean she was in the airport? I’m having a hard time understanding how United can give an UM seat away like that?

She put the question to United in writing. Here’s what it said:

We appreciate your valuable feedback regarding your daughter’s recent experience. We are sorry you felt that the situation was not handled properly by our airport agents and will forward this issue along with your comments to management for further review.

We apologize for the inconvenience and frustration this situation may have caused you and your daughter and regret any poor impression created. Your comments will help us in future policies, procedures and protocols to create an airline receptive to your needs.

While we empathize with your concerns regarding your daughter’s experience, United agents must follow certain guidelines and timetables regarding flight boarding. Passengers, even if shown as checked in, are required to be at the gate at least 10 to 15 minutes before the scheduled flight time.

Not being present at the gate during boarding may cause that person’s seat, regardless of being a minor or Premier frequent flier member, to be given away. Also, if the plane has been boarded and the passenger manifest submitted for security review to various government entities such as TSA, no further boardings or additions are allowed, regardless of whether or not the plane is still at the gate or even if the door or walkway is still open.

As a “gesture of goodwill,” United offered Gabrielle a $150 flight voucher.

Cichosz isn’t impressed with that response, and wonders if United can offer a better explanation and more compensation for her daughter’s delay. If that had been my daughter, I would definitely feel as if United’s pro forma apology didn’t fully address the question. It also fails to tell her why a flight that was supposed to be delayed two hours could depart on time without any notification.

She wants to know if I can mediate this case with United, and while I think she’s entitled to a better answer, I’m not sure if the outcome — a $150 voucher and a cookie-cutter apology — would improve. I’m willing to try.

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Update (10:50 a.m.): I’ve updated the headline to reflect that the passenger wasn’t abandoned in Syracuse. I’ve also heard from United, which says that it appears the passenger was late getting to the gate, and if that’s the case, it would be the end of the story. I’ll see what I can find out.

xy2set

I don’t remember TSA ever reporting a 1.5 hour security check-in… but still, if there was a phone call about the flight being delayed by 2 hours the day before, then I think it is definitely the airliner’s fault for falsely advertising its flight times to its customers if the flight didn’t end up getting delayed at all.
Ed Boston

And if like others have said, the airline still expects you to show up at the originally scheduled time, then why even bother notifying the passengers of the delay? Sounds like the airlines are using some unethical behaviour to cause passengers to miss their flights so they can keep the money.
y_p_w

The contract of carriage always says that the airline will get the passenger from point A to point B. If one arrives at the gate too late (i.e. the passenger’s fault), they will typically honor that contract, regardless of whether that’s the next flight, the next day, etc. It may mean flying standby and hoping someone else failed to show (if it’s a full flight).

They pretty much won’t keep the money in cases like this. She already checked in, so that’s at least a good faith indication that she intended to board the flight. I do understand that some airlines will penalize for all-out no shows, but not for this.

Of course there was the famous Hong Kong Airport meltdown where a older woman acted as if a loved one died when she found she missed her flight. Of course they just put her on the next flight.
JoeM

Uh, what about the 2 hour delay? The way the story was told, the flight was supposed to be delayed by 2 hours. They showed up at the earlier time anyway and were denied boarding at 6 in the morning for an 8 Am flight. What’s THAT all about?
http://www.tushark.com/ Tushar Khandelwal

funny, whenever I’ve boarded an international flight, I’m always told that the gate closes 10-15 minutes (depending on the airport) prior to departure and to be there beforehand, but I’ve never been quoted the 30 minutes number. Recently, most of my boarding passes include a boarding time.
http://twitter.com/travelwinechick Elizabeth Smith

Perhaps because they didn’t get the erroneous flight alert. Honestly, I have no idea. But if she was too late, they should not have paged her.
http://twitter.com/travelwinechick Elizabeth Smith

LOL, I am a 50,000 mile per year frequent flyer and a travel agent. I know how it works. But thanks for clearing that up. ;) I still stand by my previous posts. It was a situation complicated by a number of issues, including the (bogus?) flight delay alert, having to check in face-to-face to pay the UM fee (which they could have done online), long check-in and security lines, a check-in counter that doesn’t open until 5:00 a.m., and probably some inefficiency along the way.
http://twitter.com/travelwinechick Elizabeth Smith

However, it isn’t really relevant what aircraft it was, so I wanted to point that out.
Ed Boston

The part about keeping the money was in response to another post, and a personal experience, about the airlines not helping you if they announce a later time and then change it back and you end up missing the flight.
Mel65

I am….confused. Maybe it’s Chris’s editing of the story, but in the OP;s complaint to United, she only seems upset that they didn’t hold a seat for an UM….but did she detail in her complaint the fact that they were under the impression they had an additional 2 hours due to the delay? Who told them the flight was delayed? United, or an online travel service? I find it hard to believe that if she sent a copy of the email along w/ her complaint that they’d have not been more receptive. And on a side note, for what it’s worth, my son flies UM twice a year to visit his grandparents and the FAs have always been great to him. They chat with him, give him warm cookies (!) and have invited him into the cockpit a couple of times and I have to show ID to drop him off and my Dad has to show ID to pick him up. For me, it’s been worth the money for peace of mind.
y_p_w

It was scheduled as a 6 AM flight and turned out to be a 6 AM flight. I’ve learned a long time ago that estimated delays are never guaranteed to the point where one can rely on them to be late. If I relied on the estimated delays for my commuter trains to give me more time to get to the station, I’d miss the train about 80% of the time. Even if United has estimates that they’ll be late, if they can depart on time (or close to it) they will make every effort to do so. The only guarantee they make (save a cancelled flight) is that they won’t leave before the scheduled time, although I suppose that’s possible (by a few minutes) once there’s a full plane.

I looked up a United flight. The following is the URL for the results page. It will show an actual result if you have a previous search, but will still show their disclaimer even if you’ve never searched for a flight.

http://www.united.com/web/en-US/apps/travel/flightstatus/results.aspx

“* United Airlines will do everything practical to ensure we provide the most accurate flight status information at all times. However, situations change quickly and many factors affect our scheduled operations. Please understand that a flight listed as “Delayed” may, depending on the circumstances, depart “On Time.” Unless your flight has been listed as “cancelled” we suggest you always check-in for the original scheduled departure time of your flight.”
y_p_w

I’ve used “electronic boarding passes” recently – actually Passbook on iOS 6. I found it convenient, but I always had a backup, where it was a print at home boarding pass or ones printed at the airport. I haven’t had any issues with the TSA scanner (additionally TSA isn’t at SFO) but I did whip out the paper boarding pass when the flight attendant needed the info to check something in last second.

I will also say that I found something interesting. We recently flew home from an airport where they had check-in/boarding pass kiosks all over the place. They even had several at a consolidated off-site rental car facility. I understand that they even have several in some hotels and a local convention center (this is a major vacation and convention city, hint hint). We had plenty of time and I actually printed several boarding passes, including extras to keep as souvenirs (we flew Southwest, which keeps each boarding pass presented at the gate). I would have printed them out beforehand, but our local hotel charged something like $1 a page to print with a $5 minimum; that compares to some inexpensive hotels I’ve been to where internet and a printer are provided as a courtesy for free.

I also had my phone number on file. The gate was changed, and I already figured this out because the second set of boarding passes I printed out had the correct gate. However, I got a call from Southwest while we were already on the plane, alerting us to the gate change. I’m not sure if these alerts would have applied to a delay.
Ed Boston

I had used electronic boarding passes a half a dozen times through this same security line and never had a problem. The first couple times I also had a hard copy of the board pass with me but with never having an issue, stopped wasting paper to print them. But after this experience, I never use the electronic ones.
y_p_w

Like I said, I usually come with a backup. On my last outbound trip I had printed up two boarding passes just in case. I looked in my pocket for the boarding pass I’d prepared and couldn’t find it. Turns out I’d left it in the office where I wrote down the gate (wasn’t available when I checked-in the day before) and delay info. So instead of heading back to the counter or kiosks, I whipped out my backup stashed in my luggage. I still got to the gate in time and asked about when to line up at the gate (the plane wasn’t even going to arrive until at least an hour after our scheduled departure). Of course I was there in time, although I would say I did leave the office before I normally would do so based on the announced delay. I guess I got lucky.

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