RatherBeInYOW

Air Canada will happily take the money for a 15 year old, but can't put them up in a hotel because they are a minor. They know from the booking that the passenger is a minor. They need to do better than passing her off to WS with an invalid ticket and WS needs to do WAY better than sending her airside when everything is closed and thus stranding her. Even if she is "able to travel as an adult" she isn't really because of her minor status, and the airlines know this. They screwed up here, and the bad press is deserved, albeit the last chain in the link that really broke here is with WS.

When my minor age child traveled this past summer I made sure he had plenty of money and of course his cell phone and he knew what he was entitled to if things went sideways, and where to go. It also helps that he could call me if things went wrong and I had a reasonable chance of untangling things. Even still I would not have expected AC (or WS) to dump him airside in IRROPS late at night, and I would have been plenty annoyed if they did.

tcook052

As with many things, it seems a lack of planning helped contribute to this episode as the article notes this young traveler has flown the route many times but apparently nobody thought to prepare for such a contingency. I'm not suggesting that everyone should go into every situation expecting the worst but OTOH having thought through the 'what ifs' just seems prudent although that is merely MHO.

canadiancow

Are you sure? Was she booked as a "youth" or as an "adult"?

It's possible that was on the AC PNR, but even if it was, I doubt it made its way to WS. Though I still feel like this problem is WS's doing.

She hit IRROPS on AC and was rebooked. Maybe there was an issue there, but everything went to crap when the WS agent told her to leave security. That is why she spent the night in the airport.

RatherBeInYOW

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It detects the passenger age based on the DOB. I booked my son on ac.com this way, there was no way to book him as an "adult".

Completely agree.

canadiancow

You don't enter DOB for domestic bookings.

RatherBeInYOW

Ah, good catch - you can tell how often I fly domestically ;-). When I did this last year for my son it was a transborder itinerary (YOW-YYZ-LAX), which did require DOB. Not sure how this would be handled for a domestic itinerary.

canadiancow

Number of passengers expands to allow selection of adult, youth, child, infant. But since there's no youth price difference, and if you're booking for one person and don't need to open the dropdown, I find it unlikely they'd bother changing it from adult to youth.

Not that it really makes a difference anyway. It's not like a 16 year old is suddenly going to have a credit card and ability to check in to a hotel on their own.

Enigma368

This should not have happened but I agree that the fact that she was 15 is not hugely relevant. If she was under the age of 13, that would probably be different.

There are many things that can go wrong that are often not the airline's fault and may require staying overnight in the airport e.g. winter storms, aircraft malfunction, drones. Sending a 15 year old to travel alone should mean you accept the small risk of something like this happening.

Also, does Calgary airport not have airport hotels? Surely the parents could have booked a hotel for her and got the airline to reimburse later. Or, since she was on her own, I am sure she had some form of payment for emergencies.

trek604

So did she not report to the gate on time or what? The 3 others made it...

awayIgo

Jazzed91

I once spent the night on the floor of a dimly lit hallway in SFO after some IRROPS. I was 16 years old. My parents didn't even know I was out of the country, let alone in SFO.

I dealt with it. I survived.

trek604

Apparently Global says her luggage made it on the WS flight too so obviously she was on the flight's manifest... Snowflake probably was making a super long instastory and missed gate closing.

CZAMFlyer

If you're going to disparage an entire segment of the population based upon their age, be sure to attach the correct label to the correct generation.

jc94

I nearly always consider the worst case scenario when flying, especially within NA. But then despite being very much a FOTSG these days I do have significantly more experience than maybe parts of the generic population does.

I don't fully agree with this. While I didn't fly alone until I was 17 or 18 I had a great deal of experience navigating my way around other forms of transport including say central London. It wasn't a major concern (for me anyway, I later found out others had concerns I wasn't going to make it back alive). Compare this to people who may grow up in a small town and there are differences. There are also 15 year olds quite capable of dealing with it, and ones less capable, depending upon more than just where they got brought up.

Also, I don't know your age or gender but I'd venture there is a difference between a 16 year old male (who could look more than 16 years old) 20 years ago ... and a 15 year old female in 2019.

MSPeconomist