Air travel should be a safe and pleasant experience for everyone, and airlines typically take it upon themselves to ensure passengers can sit back and enjoy the flight. However, for 10-year-old Phoebe Klebahn, the experience was far from desirable.
Klebahn’s parents paid $99 extra to send her to science camp using United’s escort service for unaccompanied minors. Klebahn was scheduled to travel from San Francisco to Michigan with a connecting flight in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. After Klebahn landed in Chicago, she missed her connecting flight to Michigan because no one showed up to assist her during her trip on June 30.
United acted unprofessionally by making no effort to contact the parents to explain the situation or disclose that the service was actually outsourced to outside contractors.
The parents deserved to know this information.
United did not show concern over its failure to keep track of a child who was in their care. According to a letter written by Klebahn’s mother to the airline, when she had finally reached United personnel and learned that the plane had left on time without their daughter, United dismissively said, “It does not matter. She is still in Chicago and I am sure she is fine.”
Nobody was willing to take responsibility, acknowledge negligence or take the initiative to work toward giving the parents definitive answers. In addition to leaving the parents’ concerns unanswered, United also failed to attend to Klebahn’s repeated requests for help because they presumed someone would come soon enough.
Although Klebahn eventually did reach the camp safely, it was only after hours of waiting that Klebahn was put on a flight to Michigan.
Klebahn was simply left without an escort and then pushed aside when she asked for help, showing United’s lack of concern for customer service. United, and other airlines such as Delta who have “lost” unaccompanied minors in the past, has a distorted sense of priorities if taking care of its own customers is not very high on the list.
According to NBC News, the airline did not apologize to the Klebahn family until the incident received media attention. United, however, gave its apology simply to protect the reputation of its business, not to show genuine care for the people who come to them.
In order to more effectively care and monitor minors traveling without their families, every airline should establish a system in which airport personnel are immediately notified if a child has missed a flight. The concern for the welfare of unaccompanied minors should be as strong as the attention that the TSA places on the baggage of passengers and airport security.
There should be an established protocol to keep tabs on the child’s whereabouts and an immediate procedure to assist the child onto the next flight available to their destination.
Airlines could face even larger claims of punitive damage against them than the suit filed by Klebahn’s parents if the minors that they lose track of end up injured or missing from the airport itself.
Although Klebahn wasn’t harmed and remained inside of the airport, it shouldn’t take a kidnapping or an injury in order to push the airlines to keep sufficient attention on the minors entrusted in their care.
