Unaccompanied Minor Madness (Or, The Expensive Lesson)

[Personalized comment edited by Moderator]. I frequently have overnight connections on revenue tickets before the international segment. They are definitely NOT stopovers.

And UA doesn't check the passport before you fly to that connection city. So my point stands -- had the kid's passport info been stored in the system, and he used OLCI, all would have been just fine.

Edit to add: AND NOT BEEN CHECKING BAGS. (I thought that point was implicit.)

UA is not going to risk a (I believe) $10,000 fine flying Jr. to London without a Passport. Not to mention, the return trip. UA does not know who is holding the Passport.

I believe the $10,000 fine for the carrier was correct a few years ago. Flying without passport. Not to mention the carrier (UA in this case) must fly Jr. back to the USA - with a UA agent staying with him, until departure back to the USA.

Perhaps times have changed?

I'm with UA on this one, especially if Jr. is checking bags.

It is an expensive lesson plus the emotional ups and downs.

Like the Mastercard Commercial says...

Time with grandpa ... Priceless

So try to enjoy the trip.

Even if I do OLCI, they still check my passport when I drop my bags off...

Who said anything about checking bags?

Maybe you're exempt from what the rest of us seem to experience. But, what you refer to as "semantics" are the rules. And as OP found out, the rules aren't semantics.

Huh? Since when do they always verify it on the international leg? I'm used to them asking to *SEE* it as we board the plane but they don't go looking through it--despite our requiring visas.

It seems to me the best thing to do was split the PNR into two separate flights. I don't know why they couldn't do that.

Ticket most likely wasn't bought that way. To buy multiple tickets to cover what can be bought as one usually costs significantly more than buying a single ticket. I read the entire thread and I'm sure it was posted upthread in the original post, how it was purchased, but I'm going to bed and too tired to read it over again.

And our manager sends out a spreadsheet to us of all the fines we have gotten for invalid immigration documents as well as the number of time we as a gateway city have stopped someone who was supposed to have been verified upon initial checkin and refused them boarding for improper docs that were not caught at the initial point (both are process failures, the 1st result in fines, the 2nd result in fines saved by a addl check at the gateway flight.)

If the OP's 8 year old son was ticketed all the way thru to an international destination, then when he first checks-in for his first flight they DEFINITELY WILL check his passport. It's pretty certain that the boy would have checked his luggage all the way thru (ANC-ORD-WAS-LHR), correct? That means that he would not be claiming his luggage in ORD, and then re-checking it when dad meets his arriving aircraft. So UA MUST be sure that the child is clear to travel international when he first check's-in at his first departure city. International flights are not supposed to have baggage on them when a pax is not sitting on that plane. Again, and again, "Often1" and "Fastair" have told us over, and over the OP's son needed to have his passport available to show to the ticket agent in ANC, or he ain't goin' anywhere! - PERIOD.

[Mild but personalized text edited by Moderator]!

UA Saver Awards--- ONE WAY

ANC-LHR --- 30K miles
ORD-LHR --- 30K miles
ANC-ORD --- 17,500 miles

There will be "NO" refund of miles and as others have stated, if the boys itin is cancelled because his dad purchased a ticket on another domestic flight (using miles or cash) from ANC to ORD and failed to change the original outbound to ORD-WAS-LHR for the same saver miles this itin is probably cancelled and there will be a lot of "Splainin' to do" to get the seats back, especially if the flights are now full!

Except when they do, and it's not departure airport dependent. It's "are you flying to a destination that doesn't heavily fine for delivering undocumented travelers, or a country that doesn't require a visa, and have you used that passport before and is it still valid" dependent.

Honestly, who has not had their passport checked at the gate or heard the announcement "if you don't have 'DOCS OK' stamped on your boarding pass, approach the podium..."

Hard to fault UA here. Parents had the responsibility to know the rules. If I'm betting on this, the kid had bags to check. No way in hades could that bag be checked without a passport in hand.

"Yabba Dabba DOO"! You win that bet!!! ^

That's what has been stated over and over, but a few want to still have the kid check-in online, not check bags, not have a parental permission slip in hand, and not be required, like every other passenger leaving the U.S. (yes, even to connections) to show a valid passport at the first airport that they check-in at!

It's called, United is ALWAYS WRONG", no matter what, and btw who needs stinkin' rules, when we have experts right here in River City!

I apologize if you miss the point. This isn't about what did happen, but what could have happened.

IF the kid didn't have bags to check.....
IF the kid already had his passport info in the system....
IF the kid used OLCI or the chicken.....

He absolutely would not have have been asked to present his passport in ANC. He would have walked right past the check-in counter, gone through security, and presented his ANC-ORD BP at the gate. And then boarded the plane.

I never claimed that either one of those conditions was true, but rather am simply saying that IF they were true, he would have made it to ORD just fine sans passport.

And I'm not blaming UA here or anybody else. I'm just saying that there are ways that for the OP's plan to have been executed successfully. It wasn't guaranteed to fail, as many in this thread claim. Clearly, this is an academic argument.... at least one of the three IF's was violated, and that's what caused the breakdown. But you can't deny that it could have worked. How do I know? I fly to the intl gateway all the time without showing my passport!

I grew up in Anchorage. Not sure I'd describe it that way.

if the moon was only purple, if the mgr would only have pulled the pitcher before he did etc etc You can list 1000 'Ifs' it doesnt matter. The only way I see the kid not having a bag , besides their carry-on is only if they were landing and spending the day or 2 max. Doubt that was the case = most likley bags were involved. And with daddy on a biz trip to a few citys I highly doubted he schelped the kids bag with him

So lets keep our head grounded and not try to think up some highly doubtful circumstances that had a < .99999% of being the actual case

I only hope the OP and their kid made it to London and can laugh it all off and that everything over there worked out as they hoped!

OK, but I can only think of 3. And they are pretty simple. You can say he needed to check a bag -- I can easily imagine he didn't.

I will agree with you (and others) that if he needed to check a bag, he wasn't going to fly. Rules are rules.

Will you agree with me that if he didn't need to check a bag, he could have boarded the plane to ORD, and onto the intl gateway? Some rules are tricky to enforce, and thus their are often creative solutions to get around them.

Of course it would normally cost more but in this case it seems like the proper way to fix the situation. They're not actually getting any extra benefit from this.