They just can't seem to get their act together.
Wow, how frightening. I’ve wondered why plane air is so bad when you first get on but it usually gets better while taxiing. If they have to cool people down with ice, there’s a clue that the climate control should be turned on!
Why was there even a debate,? Why take the risk?
What a weird and horrible situation all around. I would have been dialing 911 from the tarmac if the airline wouldn’t have dealt with the situation or let us off.
There should be a good samaritan law like in CA where you can now break a car window to save a pet locked in a hot vehicle. The aircraft version is opening the emergency exits. This is nuts!
I think the mistake was made in the mom and son getting back on the plane once they were off. It was REALLY hot that day, the flight was scheduled near noon, and I think the delays were coming from the other airports, that they were being held from taking off. United should have suggested the mom rebook to a later flight when it was cooler once she was off the plane.
I remember once when my daughter was an infant I was holding her (in my air conditioned home) and I could just feel her temperature rising. It went from normal to about 103 in just a few minutes. As soon as I got up to call the doctor and was moving around, it went down. Applying a cool cloth, down more. Babies get overheated very quickly and sitting on a hot plane is not an ideal situation.
Here we are again!
I wonder, in retrospect, if the same inaccurate scanning happened to the other family who had a standby customer claim their son’s seat. Unlike this woman, they complained about it and were all booted off.
A more thorough article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2017/07/05/united-accidentally-gave-a-toddlers-seat-away-and-made-his-mom-hold-him-for-a-3-hour-flight/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories-2_unitedflight602pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
About 5 or 10 years ago I thought that United could not possibly get any worse.
I was wrong.
The comments on this story on twitter were unbelievable (ok, not really, but still disgusting). A lot of “OH THE HORROR! A mother had to sit with her child on her lap!”
It’s like they missed that this was a PAID seat that was taken and a child forced to sit unsafely on a parent’s lap.
I bet those twitter complainers would have a fit if they were similarly treated on a flight. They would probably have a fit if they had to sit in the same row as a lap toddler!
Honestly, its a violation of FAA rules and United should be fined. They apparently gave the mother the run around for 5 days before apologizing and offering a (whoopee!) voucher.
^ And called it a “goodwill gesture.”
gag
United is beyond stupid.
I’m wondering whether the child’s boarding pass was scanned at all. I can see a situation where a mother carrying a child hands over the boarding pass(es), and only the mother’s pass gets scanned. If it was on the phone, that might be the case (although I’ve had problems even getting electronic boarding passes for 2 people, always have to print passes if it’s not just me). Or maybe the boarding agent assumed the child was under 2 and did not have a pass and did not ask or look for it.
Now the gate agents think one passenger never boarded, so they give away the seat. Once the standby passenger is on the plane, what do you do? You have a mess is what you have. Either the cabin crew has to eject the boarded standby passenger, or the child has to sit on mom’s lap. Bad situation either way. Whose fault? The boarding agent at least, and maybe the mom for not making sure both passes were scanned.
I’m not defending how United handled the mother’s complaint, but can see how it could happen that would not involve malice or gross incompetence. Just humanity.
One- it’s not the mom’s job to make sure the ticket is scanned. She’s allowed to trust the airline staff to do their job.
Two- what is more than just “incompetence” is when the flight attendant came by and shrugged off the mom and forced her to UNSAFELY and against regulations to hold her child on her lap.
There is a less bad solution: revoke the standby customer’s boarding pass and compensate him somehow. The paying customer whose only mistake was trusting the airline staff not to screw up should take priority.
The Mom was quoted somewhere as saying both boarding passes were “zapped” and there was no problem with boarding.
It was a full flight and they had at least one standby passenger hoping to get on. I wonder if the FA did a head count and missed the child or wrongly assumed he was a lap child. They could have CHECKED that before allowing any standby passengers to get on. It seems to be the most obvious thing in the world to check which children are lap babies and which are not before determining if there is an extra seat. Especially if the parent protests!
The standby passenger is no gem either. If the person next to you is protesting that you’re taking their kid’s seat wouldn’t you want to know if that was a legit claim? It seems this guy just wanted to get on the flight no matter what.
Here’s the problem I have with this scenario. They sold the same seat to 2 people by accident. OK, so someone is going to have to go without. Why on earth not take the seat away from the person who bought it at the last minute, instead of the person who bougt it first?
The woman didn’t want to make a scene, but I would not have moved. She had a boarding pass, the guy is standing in the aisle… My daughter was tiny and at 3 weighted under 25 pounds but she still needed her own seat. I wouldn’t have picked up up from the seat.
I’ve been on flights where two people were assigned the same seat. One person doesn’t get to go, and it is usually the person standing in the aisle.
This should’ve been a no brainer. He was flying standby.