I was reading the news and could not help but smile when I read about the 10-year old girl who was inadvertently put on a wrong plane to Newark when she was bound to go to Cleveland instead from Boston. The girl, Miriam, was traveling as an unaccompanied minor (meaning traveling alone) on the Continental Airlines from Boston to go to her relatives in Cleveland. Her father, Jonathan Kamens, dropped her off at the gate to the Continental agents but there were two regional jets that were loaded from the same gate at the same time at the Boston’s Logan airport this past Sunday. The agents put the girl on the wrong plane accidentally, (obviously! If it was intentionally, won’t they be sued?) even though the paperwork was in detail, as a result of miscommunication. (Time for some effective communication seminars in the aviation industry). Once the grandparents in Cleveland raised a flag, saying that the girl was missing, the airlines realized their mistake and took proper actions to get the girl safely to Cleveland. All is well, that ends well.
To get unaccompanied minors traveling in airplanes, the industry charges a fee of about $75 to $100 one-way. When you are booking the ticket, you give details as to who will drop the kid at the gate and who will be the person who will pick them up at the gate at the destination. Both parties should provide proper identification while boarding and receiving. In the interim, during flight hours and stop-overs, the flight attendant would take care of the kid, provide meals and they would play or watch television or rest in the Young Traveler Club under their supervision. How do I know about this? I have been there, done that. I have sent my son, Yashwant, just not to California (from Virginia) but also to India as an unaccompanied minor.
I sent my son to California to visit his cousins during summer break when he was five years old and he travelled all by himself. He was excited about the trip, traveling in the plane all by himself and spending his summer with his cousins alone with out parental supervision. The following year, I sent him to India to visit my parents for nearly three months. After two months, I went to India for three weeks and brought him back. During that trip was when his passport expired and had to go to the US embassy to get a new one done. In the years to follow, he has been travelling by himself to India or California by himself. If I tell him about vacations, the first question he asks is if he is going to be travelling alone and if not, at least to have his seat far away from others. In that regard, he is an independent boy and bless my stars, that I didn’t have to look for him in Indonesia when he is supposed to land in India.
The father of the girl that made the headlines was refunded the service fee for unaccompanied minors and gave an apology. But the father is not satisfied with it. Would anyone be unhappy and angry about it? Sure. But the airlines gave an apology and a refund. Just accept it and move on, instead of brewing a frivolous lawsuit. People tend to feel as if someone has to pay for it when someone commits a mistake. Sure, miscommunication and mistakes happen. Unless it was a planned mistake, just take the apology and the refund and move on. Many might say that we should not send our kids unaccompanied or that flight attendants are not baby-sitters but we pay for the service and send our kids on occasions where we cannot go with them for months together leaving our work. (Do you even know how much the ticket costs to go to India?) How many times have the luggage been misplaced or sent to the wrong destination? How many times has the plane be overbooked? How many times you are about to board the plane and the plane is cancelled because the pilot is sleepy and they could not find a replacement pilot? Yet we continue to travel in planes, don’t we? So people will continue and must continue to send their kids unaccompanied if situation calls for it.
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