On such itineraries for UA-SK TATL journeys, UA generally checks the passenger in for both the flights from the O ticket coupon city on the ticketed itinerary — that would be at RDU for the RDU-EWR-ARN trip.

For purposes of the US and Germany, what big fines from the two governments for being undocumented? He was not undocumented; and he remained admissible into Germany too as a US-EU/Swedish dual-citizen.

A non-threatening passenger asking to be removed from a flight that has left the gate doesn’t always get taken back to the departure gate. Not even always for international flights where a passenger says the passports are missing. I would say that his being a minor and indicating he was traveling alone to the wrong international destination was more certain to help get the plane to go back to the gate than my middle-aged buddy saying she can’t find her passport and wants the plane to go back to the gate to look for it and get it.

again, this is where I think the first issue was - SAS allowing the purchase of a ticket on a UA-operated flight that was outside UA rules.

Its a little surprising no one seems to have programmed logic to prevent this of purchase, or at least, instead of confirming the itinerary immediately, have the purchaser call to verify they meet the requirements of both airlines.

It cant be that difficult - if passenger is < 15 and is flying on flight operated by UA —> get a message that says ‘call agent at [phone #] to complete purchase’. Agent can then explain the issue and give the purchaser options. It can’t be that hard - given even UA has figured out how to block exit row seats, for example, from being selected when I’m traveling with my kids.

UA should also be able to flag when they get the request for this reservation, and should be able to refuse to add it to the ticket.

exactly what I think the first issue was - that SAS shouldn’t have sold the ticket with a UA flight (and I haven’t seen any information whether this was an SAS codeshare or not, but either way, it’s pretty irrelevant - UAs policies still apply to their portion of the itinerary no matter whose code their flight is under).

Perhaps this logic needs to play out at purchase time. If UA gets a reservation for a child 14 or under traveling on their own, there should be a message before finalizing the purchase, or at least before they issuing the ticket - making sure there is either UM service added per policy, or that they can document who is responsible for the child with a valid PNR of an adult traveler with them on the same itinerary. That would have saved this from happening, and also would push this responsibility away from the frontline airport staff (often contractors) who won’t have to feel bad about preventing check in or feel like being forced to ‘help’ the customer for a scenario the airline doesn’t want to get involved in, precisely because they didn’t want the exact situation that happened to happen.

Its not that that it has to completely prevent kids from being on their own PNRs - which given how airline ticket purchases work (can’t combine award and paid tickets, for example) doesn’t provide enough flexibility. But doing an extra check with those kind of tickets in advance to make sure customers are aware of the policies and ensuring they are in compliance - either by having the UM service or knowing who exactly on a separate PNR and traveling with the kid is responsible, seems reasonable.

The stories I’ve read seem to imply this, and that the SAS and EW flights were boarding right next to each other, plus an announcement made either for the kid, or a similar name. It’s not clear (to me at least), whether the announcement was made from one gate and they thought it was from the other, whether there was a gate change, or if there were other factors.

Given UA doesn’t offer unaccompanied minor service on connections, obviously, staff wouldn’t have been trained on bringing a UM from one gate to another (not that’s its really that hard, but go figure..). But let’s not discount EW here, which somehow allowed the minor on the plane in the first place. They share the blame here. Clearly, that shouldn’t have happened - that’s why we have BPs that scan, and have information written on it like flight number, destination, etc. A competent gate agent doing even minimal checks should have caught this at boarding and prevented the kid from boarding the wrong flight in the first place.

thats great that you were able to handle that at 12. And that you had no problems ever - partially, it’s probably luck. But many kids can’t at 12 or 14. It’s better to require he service, IMO (even realizing there can be a profit motive) to a subset of passengers that might require it then to lower it to have kids traveling on there own who really can’t handle it. I don’t know if 14 is the exact right cutoff- maybe it should be 15 or 16 - maybe 12 - but clearly UA has decided 15 is the youngest they want kids traveling alone unaccompanied on their planes. Presumably there’s a reason they chose that age.

I also don’t know when you were 12 - but assuming it wasn’t in the last several years, the world has changed - quite a lot, as has air travel. Yes, we have smartphones that work in whatever country we turn them on in. But theres also been a lot of changes that are not for the good. World can be a scary place. And there are different approaches taken In general in US and EU - which I bring up due to the situation in this thread, where SAS doesn’t require kid to be a UM but UA does. In the lawsuit-focused US, it’s not a surprise that US carriers require UM service for older kids than EU carriers do. Unfortunately, UA tried to go above and beyond it’s policy here, which showed exactly why they don’t allow trips like this for UMs.

Without him being made to use the UAM service, I have little to no doubt that he would not have ended up on the EWR-DUS plane.

The same set of snafus would not have happened if he wasn’t made to use the paid (since refunded) UAM service from UA.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews...%3fid=64093506

The above indicates that a gate change contributed to the UAM service provider’s confusion about where to board the teenager.

There are multiple things that went wrong, but without the UA UAM service being required by UA, this set of snafus would definitely not hit as it did.

They wanted help to get their son onto the right flight after he got placed on the wrong flight. They seemed to want get the right story out there when people had questions. And they seemed to want to hope that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again to other families. And they seemed to want that the UA UAM policy be rewound so as to be more practical for more families and more akin to SAS’s UAM policy. What’s wrong with any of that?

I would have to say that the family members’ communications (of the sort I mentioned) during and after the incident were not the problem.

thats very convoluted logic; this particular UM would have been fine without the UM service, including a Terminal change, but was forced into a bad situation because of multiple mistakes, starting with the booking process, along the way? How can those dots be connected?

Here’s some new news not being replayed here...

... and he would have had a lot harder time being able to get on the EWR-DUS flight if he had to show his own boarding passport and passport to the gate agent to board the plane like all the non-UAMs trying to board the EWR-DUS flight.

UA took away and handled the teenager’s travel docs as part of its UAM practice. Some here seem to have little to no experience with how that is done by UA and other airlines and what that means for the teenager’s situation that day.

I replayed it here before.

With the the teenager having gotten Eurowings to start to go back to the gate, more parties — including, but definitely not limited to, UA — got into action at EWR to try to figure out what was wrong and try to ensure a fix was delivered on. Since I would have expected the UA UAM service provider to be back waiting there at reception after having deposited the passenger incorrectly, is delivery upon such a basic expectation something for which UA should be applauded? Well, I don’t know about you, but when I make a mess and try to clean up my own mess, I don’t think I deserve a big thank you from anyone for doing so. But if you want to thank me for making a mess and thank UA for making a mess, I won’t stop you.

According to reports here, he was handed the wrong boarding pass for EW. I think he had access to his information. Not saying he should have prevented the mis-board, but both sides of the story can’t be played here. All of my girls have been UM on UA and B6 at ages much younger than 14, there are some basics (what’s your destination?) you can’t mess up.

trust me, you’ll receive no plaudits for the convoluted story you’re spinning here.

Good day!

Calling the truth “a convoluted story” won’t make a convoluted story into a fiction.

Even UA has apologized for the mess it put this teenager and his family through. Or is UA in the business of apologizing for fictional events for which it has no responsibility?

And yet there are basics that UA seems to be able to mess up, as has been evident in this teenager’s situation.

His travel doc bundle — boarding passes included —almost certainly were in the possession of UA’s UAM service provider until it was handed over to Eurowings to board him. He almost certainly was not handed the wrong boarding pass before he was directed by the UA-required UAM service provider to board the wrong flight at EWR. Without the UAM service his correct travel docs would have been in his own hands the entire time during the whole trip from RDU and the entire time at EWR; but they weren’t because of being made to use the UAM service and how UAM service operates at EWR too.