Unaccompanied minors bumped and rerouted by airline

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Keith009

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Solo children bumped and rerouted by airline - National - theage.com.au

Solo children bumped and rerouted by airline
Adam Ray
April 11, 2007



AN ANGRY New Zealand mother says she will never fly Qantas again after her two unaccompanied children were "bumped" off an overloaded international flight and sent to another city.


Victoria Read complained to the airline after her children, William, 11, and Beatrice, 8, were stopped from boarding their flight from Wellington to Sydney on Sunday.


Qantas had been told the children were travelling unaccompanied.



...
 
Hmmm... from reading the story, it appears that:
1. The mother of these children didn't follow the correct procedure for booking seats for unaccompanied minors;
2. They got there in the end without any disaster, despite their mother's ignorance of the requirments of the carrier, and;
3. Any indignation from a woman called Victoria, especially one who named her children William and Beatrice, should be taken with a large grain of salt.

I doubt any execs at QF will be resigning in disgrace over the revelation that this family won't be using QF services in the future for the 2 economy sectors that each of them fly every year...:rolleyes:
 
Not sure what she is indignant about. Kids flew, got home looked after by QF staff at AKL.

Based on the QF website a booking for unacompanied minors CAN NOT be made on line.

Basically this woman was negligent.

the risk to QF is not so much this woman and her 2 sectors a year but other people seeing this in the news and wondering whether they should send their kids on QF. Mind you based on the behaviour of some kids that wouldnt be a bad thing ;)
 
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Agree that QANTAS are not at fault here, I only booked my 11 year daughter on a Qantas domestic flight yesterday, you HAVE to book on the phone (or in a Qantas travel office). If you try and book a child online (under 12 years) without an adult travelling, the website will not allow you to proceed, the only way around this is to deliberately book the kids as an adult on the website.

The downside of not be able to book minors online is you do have to pay a booking fee and you cannot access the cheapest 'Red e-deal' style fares. This may cause people to try and circumvent the correct procedures to save some money with obvious potential outcomes (as in this case) if they are undetected as a minor by the check-in staff.

My experience with QANTAS on the occasions our daughter makes short flights on QANTAS (and VB for that matter) as an unaccompanied minor have always been good, they take care of the kids, once calling my mobile to check on me when I was 5 minutes late due to SYD traffic and always look after her by seating her appropriately and giving her plenty of attention with games, colouring books and lollies etc.. If you follow the procedures you will not have problems.
 
Never sent my own child unaccompanied yet (she is only 11 months old), but recently had our neice fly from BNE to MEL to visit us. Qantas called us two days before teh scehduled departure date to confirm that we would be at the airport to collect her. So certainly in this case (and most others it appears) the Qantas procedures cannot be faulted
 
My 12yo nephews have visited us in NYC, having flown unaccompanied from BNE. UA had everything organised scrupulously, and it all went off without a hitch. If things had been organised properly in the first place, there would have been no problem.
 
I might be missing something here, but Qantas are claiming they didn't know they were un-accompanied. I may be simple, but I'd have thought that removing two children from a flight and having no adult complain about it would be a fairly good clue that they were un-accompanied???? Perhaps it's a plot for a new Jodie Foster movie in the making.

JB
 
I am not sure if I was trying to save weight on a plane, I would choose an 8 and 11 year old to remove. Now, while Qantas may have been able to handle the situation better, it has also been reported that the guardian accepted the change to the travel plan and they were looked after at Auckland.

At the end of the day, check-in is not the appropriate time to be advising that a traveller is unaccompanied.
 
So who is going to write to the paper and berate the mother for her stupidity?
 
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