Unaccompanied Minor Madness (Or, The Expensive Lesson)

Sympathy for the 8-year old. Of course. Wish life were easier for OP. Yes, but the crack about "UA made the kid cry" is just blame-shifting. The rules are clear. And, while having the passport checked at another station made sense based on these particular facts, it screams out international child abduction / passport fraud (not an accusation against OP, simply pointing out reality) to check documents without the 8-year old physically present.

OP should immediately make certain with UA that his son's onward IAD-LHR-XXX-ANC is still in place. It may well have been cancelled at ANC when he did not board. It can be reinstated, but sooner the better as the flight could be overbooked.

On return and not before, I would put together just the facts without recriminations and accepting responsibility for the error, e.g., no passport at ANC, ask UA to reprice the son's itinerary IAD-LHR-XXX-ANC and see if it comes out less than what OP paid. I would also ask UA to consider refunding or providing a credit for the UM fee since it wasn't used.

UA has no obligation to do so here, so all of this is about tone.

I have never quite understood why my passport is required at the original departure point when connecting to an international leg. UA always, always, always verifies the passport before boarding that final leg to the international destination, so what does it matter where I have my passport until I am ready to board that final leg?

This is a case of UA having become too rigid in their rules. While I understand the general policy, the explanation made perfect sense, and they could have given you/him the benefit of the doubt at departure, knowing full well that there is no way in the world he would end up going to London without his passport.

If an airline doesn't trust an agent enough to be discerning in cases such as this, they should just fire them (or move them to some other position if union agreements don't allow it). They should certainly not make the entire journey miserable for every passenger involved. Common sense.

This is where UA fails everyday. Instead of attempting to make good out of a bad situation, they didn't. Just a little extra work and UA could've done good here.

Reminds me of something that's happened with my grandparents in the mid 80's.

They were flying ORD-BOS-Europe, overnighting in BOS to visit us. They realized once they were in BOS that they had left their passports at home.

So.... They had a friend retrieve them. The friend brought them to the ORD RCC. The RCC put them on the next flight to BOS. The BOS RCC then held them for my grandparents.

The BOS-Europe airline (not sure which one) changed their flight by one day at no cost.

And that was that.

My grandparents were not flying F (C didn't exists). FF programs didn't really exist.

Would any of these things happen today?

it is not just UA
This lack of empowering agents is a key element in decease in customer satisfaction among regular and irregular travelers.

Research...research...research!

Not for just anyone, of course. But I bet LH would do that for a HON, BA for a Prem, CX for a Diamond+, and SQ for a Solitaire PPS.

Just speaking personally, BA and CX have moved mountains for me on the truly rare occasion where I really screwed up. Not to the level of your example...but then again, I never needed quite that much.

UA? Forget it.

I've had UA not check my passport on many occasions. First of all, you had to have flown UA with a passport in the recent past.

Secondly, you have to check-in online.

Third, you have to either carry your bags with you or check them at curbside. Sometimes, you can check bags inside, and simply be asked for an ID, but not your passport. Sometimes, they want to see the passport.

Once, I was traveling with a friend and we were going to Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and back. The night before, I asked "You do have your passport," to which the reply was - "Yea, I used it just the other day - it's in my pants." Well, it was - and the pants got washed. I mean it was really ruined. Technically, it was all there, but there were blue splotches and stuff on all the pages. Not to mention that it was now three dimensional, not flat.

I thought about it a while and I said, "Well, let's try it." We checked in online, went to the airport, checked bags, showed them our driver's licensees, and off we went. No one ever asked to see our passports until we got to Hong Kong. Passport control looked at it - asked what happened to it - he said he washed it - they stamped it and that was it. This continued the same in the other two counties as well. Only coming back into the US did we have a problem, and even then the customs guy just said, "you know you need to replace this before you travel again." Duh.

So, traveling without a passport - No. Traveling without UA looking at it - sometimes.

Billy

Because the ticket and thus the contract is from origin to final destination, not two separate tickets from origin to intermediate and another from intermediate to final. If UA were to board you at origin to intermediate w/out the requirements to complete the ticket/contract, and you were unable to meet the requirements to continue, the airline would be stuck on the wrong end of contractual liability. If you misconnect once you initiate travel, the airline's liability is to get you to your final ticketed destination. Now airline has accepted you without the ability to meet their obligation. As a side note, now let's say you have checked bags. Should they delay the hundreds of people on the intl leg to remove the cans, locate you bag, pull it, then reload the cans, or just let it go and eat the rather substantial fine and potentially endanger those onboard by violating security rules?

I'm no lawyer, just a CS agent, but how many regulated things allow 1 party to initiate a contract without having the ability to meet their end of it? Would you have planes take off into weather with minimum fuel hoping that the weather will clear and that they don't have to fly around/over the storm in your path or would you rather the airline take off knowing that without any unforseen circumstances, they have the ability to get to the destination?

What about if you have an overnight at the gateway before continuing to the final? And assuming that your passport information is stored in the system, i.e. you've flown international within the past N months?

I've been in that situation, and don't recall showing a passport to anyone. In fact, I'm sure I've just gone straight to the gate and boarded the domestic flight just like usual.

So wouldn't this all be different if he didn't get the dreaded 'this is not a boarding pass' thing from OLCI? in other words, the kid could have boarded, flown to ORD, and STILL not actually had the passport on him. It's just that his credentials hadn't been verified in the last few months.

You may have been on a stopover, not a connection. Terms such as "overnight" and "layover" don't really matter [B]Fastair[B] hit the nail on the head here. OPs son was on a ticket ANC-LHR with connections at ORD and WAS.

Except when they don't, which is reasonably often and extremely airport-dependent.

Except that the risk isn't the passenger's at all; cost of return transport is the responsibility of the carrier (in this case, UA), and they can be fined quite severely too.

UA is in the right here regarding the passport. As for the UM and nonstop flight issue, that's a sword that cuts both ways, and that's the policy they've chosen.

That being said, at the airport, the agents could have offered to change their itinerary to drop the first segment (and perhaps a refund due), and if the OP had enough miles, to then have the child be put on the same flight with award miles. But maybe that's too creative and customer centric these days...

They merged with another airline and took some of the policies/systems/procedures that came with it.

Thus the goofy passport scan requirement for OLCI. Thus the lack of passport information on the website even after scanning. Thus the demand to see the passport twice (checkin and gate) your first flight with a new PP (and any time they forget it).

I was following you until the curbside checkin part. Baggage for international flights cannot be checked in at curbside (although I find most sky caps will be happy to help me get my heavy bags to the counter). At the international departure gate, however, I can't recall ever boarding a flight without first having to show my passport to the GA. I fly out of the USA at least once/month, so unless it is destination specific it seems extremely unlikely that one would be allowed to fly without having shown proof of possession.

Thank you. I now understand. It never really bothered me, as I would be some kind of frustrated if I flew to my international departure city only to learn that I had left my passport in yesterday's pants upon arrival from somewhere else. That is something I'm very capable of doing.