Boston, MA – Imagine putting your child on a plane to visit her grandparents. The plane lands and the grandparents are waiting, but your child is nowhere to be found.
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That just happened to Jonathan Kamens, who put his 10-year-old daughter, Miriam, on a flight to Cleveland Sunday morning.
As required by the airline, Kamens walked his daughter through airport security to the gate area, spoke to the agents and put his daughter in their care when it came time to board the plane.
“They seemed like they knew what they were doing. The paperwork is very specific,” Kamens said.
He noted it specified her flight number, destination and phone numbers and addresses for him and his in-laws, who would meet Miriam at the airport in Cleveland.
Kamens watched airline personnel take his daughter and the paperwork with her destination and flight number onto a plane. He assumed everything was fine.
“I had no inkling anything was wrong until my father-in-law called me and said, ‘where is she?'”
Miriam, it turns out, was in Newark. The airline staff put her on the wrong plane and neither flight crew noticed.
A Continental Airline spokesperson issued this statement:
“We take very seriously our responsibility to care for unaccompanied minors on our flights. In this case, there were two flights departing simultaneously from a single doorway and miscommunication among staff members resulted in the child being boarded on the wrong aircraft. We are truly sorry for this error and have apologized to the family. The child was supervised throughout the entire process and was rebooked and routed to the proper destination on the same day. ”
However, for 45 minutes no one at the airline could tell Kammens where his daughter was.
“She’s off on her trip to visit her grandparents, and then she’s gone, evaporated into thin air and that’s scary,” said Kamens. “The number of people who must have failed to do what they’re supposed to do is mindboggling.”
Kamens says it was he who suggested the airline check in Newark, because he remembered another plane on the tarmac was going to Newark.
Miriam arrived in Cleveland a few hours behind schedule. Kamens said she seemed no worse for the wear, but he won’t forget the panic anytime soon.
“I’m sure there are rules that the flight crew is supposed to verify the number of people on the plane matches the number of people on the manifest.”
If there are, Continental Airlines was unable to explain them to WBZ. Our request for that information went unanswered.
That’s very traumatising especially for the very young. In 2days day i wouldn’t deem it fit to send a young one alone on a plane. one never knows wat happens there…. but it any case hope you get something for this.
Mistakes happen, and we all count among those who committed them. This one had its moments of fear, and no one can deny that. I hope this event is a wake up call to airlines to be a bit more vigilant to insure that minors traveling alone are properly directed. But judging from other articles on this website, I get the feeling that such an event is grounds for a lawsuit and a settlement for big money in damages. Here go the lawyers again. No wonder there are so many jokes about them.
If I remember they used to charge an extra fee for that, something to the tone of $60.00, did they refund the fee?
Ohy Gevalt,
Poor kid and parents!
Now they’re going to make it even harder to send under-age children (even up to 15 yrs old) on flights. It already costs up to $100 each way and involves mishigina rules.
Had the airline not been so concerned this never would have happened. The parents would have been responsible and they would have put her on the right plane and mentioned to the flt crew to keep an eye on her. But no way that is not good enough. You need to send her as unaccompanied minor pay $75 prearrange who will pick her up, wait at the gate until the flight taxies and have the kid wear her ticket round her neck. All so that the huge airline corporation will be responsible.
Thank you but I would much rather I decide how my kids can fly and who will be responsible for them.
Recently we had to send our grandson home via Continental and we had to follow the same procedure. However, he ended up at the right place. The service is an extra $75 each way.
Shouldn’t the airlines’ procedure include the pre-seating question:
“Young lady, where are you traveling to?”
Sue ’em!
They should not have to pay any extra charge since these employees can’t even do their jobs right the first time!! All they give are excuses. How many hours does that poor kid have to fly?? How many hours was she supoposed to fly? Figure it out! They should be paying the parents not to sue the pants off of them for the aggrevation they went through, are going through, etc. Nobody should have to go through that!! What kind of people do they hire if they cannot read simple instructions like a flight number? Once they read the wrong number they would have taken the kid off thje plane!! The fact is, they did not read!!!!!!!
How could a father let a 10 year old girl fly by herself?
This ties in to our earlier discussion of the Air France flight, and the widow of the Jewish passenger. Some people suggested that merely having presented his boarding pass at the gate should be enough evidence that he was on the plane and died. Here we have a case where that assumption fails.
Suppose one of these two planes had crashed, ch”v, with the loss of all on board, and no bodies recovered. And suppose that a married man was booked to be on that plane, but actually boarded the other one. Now in a case where “שלום בינו לבינה ושלום בעולם”, as soon as he got off the other plane and found out what had happened he would call his family to reassure them, and so they would only have thought he was dead for a short time. Certainly not long enough for his wife to even contemplate remarriage! But what if he had problems, and saw this as an opportunity to make a fresh start? Who would know? And if we accepted this sort of evidence, what would stop the wife from ch”v remarrying?
this story kind of reminds me of home alone 2: lost in new york.
what compensation did the parents get?
Please say tehillim for the family.
Miriam ben Yehonosan
May the family be united safely.
The airline made a mistake. There is no excuse for it, but no one was hurt.
How many hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors fly each year?
And how wrapped in cellophane are your children if the notion of sending them chaperoned on a flight at the age of 8 is grounds for terror? It’s not risky, it’s not threatening, and it’s not a big deal.
Sorry, I appreciate your outrage but I would never send my 10 year old daughter on a flight by herself. As a matter of fact if I have to send a child via bus from a distance as short as Monsey to Boro Park I look for a responsible adult (preferably someone I know) to keep an eye on the child throughout the trip and ensure she is met at the other end. Sorry, Dave of #25 …I have no idea if you have children but the world is not what it once was and the word “pedophile” is not a new concept.
Similar story happened to an adult i know who was traveling with a baby on a different airline and was being escorted to the plane. They put her on the wrong flight and caught the mistake right before the plane was going to take off. The mistake involved international travel so this could have been pretty bad. Airline mistakes do happen, even with all the pre-boarding security we have.
Stuff happens. No biggie. Sure, everyone was panicked for an hour. They will get over it.
10-year-old and younger travel all the time alone these days. It is not a problem. A mistake happened, and it got corrected. I can’t believe all this dramatic crap over such a small thing.
How come no one is saying anything about the parents?
When you send a kid as a UAM (UnAccompanied Minor) you are REQUIRED to sit at the gate until the flight departs. You are with the kid and you CLEARLY see which flight the kid goes on! I have sent kids home – they attend East Coast yeshivas and live “out of town” – as UAMs and I could tell you firsthand you wait at the gate till the plane leaves.
I will blame whoever took the kid to the airport!
I also blame the flight attendants for not paying attention.
I also blame the kid for not saying anything when they made the announcement “This is the final reminder that you have boarded flight …… to Newark….”
If you can get $1000 when the airline misroutes your luggage, how much can you get when they misroute your kid?
Send her fedex next time. She’ll get to the right destination on time or it won’t cost you a dime.
Did she get the extra miles?
That is y I only fly united.