United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

They aren't in the business of transporting human beings, but they are in the business of transporting and storing things that are really, really important to human beings. Their financial information. Their family photos, records of who they talked to and what they said, etc. Real human beings got hurt when Yahoo handed over information about who they were talking to to the Chinese government. If you spend 99 cents on an MP3 from Amazon and something goes wrong you'll almost certainly get a really good customer service experience. There's no reason that a company you're trusting with all of your communications can't have the same level of service.

This is a problem bigger than United -- which has a lot of problems. This is what you get when you subsidize bad companies that need to fail. United needs to fail so someone better can take over. The moral hazards are ruining the country.

I saw it recently with farmers struggling from the drought. Compare this farmer: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7417774n who has acres full of hay that don't do well in the drought to this farmer who planted a solid base of drought tolerant sorghum http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7417664n in addition to his corn. The second farmer is diversified. He's making smarter decisions with his farm, but because he wasn't hit as hard as other farmers who aren't making good decisions with their land, he's not going to get as much compensation for failed crops. That first farmer needs to go to work for the second farmer so he can learn better and more profitable methods of farming and we will all benefit -- including him. Watch the two farmers. Look how worn out the first one is compared to the second one. The first farmer is working harder the second farmer is working smarter. We need to reward that.

The same thing with United. United Airlines was the largest recipient of cash grants from the US after 9/11, getting $774.2 Million [1]. If the US hadn't kept United alive over the past 10 years so an Airline that cares could fill the void, this little child may not have been left stranded at the airport by a company full of employees who don't need to care.

http://www.laane.org/downloads/ShortchangedStudy.pdf

As someone who is dating a flight attendant, may I say: Please don't choke a flight attendant. They are absolutely the least culpable people involved with airline incompetence.

At least for Delta, flight attendants' primary compensation is based on scheduled flight time. Not actual flight time. Not tarmac time. Not delay time. Scheduled flight time. And even then, only with passengers!

So when you're stuck at the gate, waiting for some nincompoop to fetch the jet bridge, and you start giving the flight attendants hell, you need to understand that waiting there sucks for them too. They have only a few short hours to get a half night's sleep and enjoy the destination; the only perk that justifies their lifestyle. The rest of their job boils down to glorified waitress and underpaid babysitter.

If you think you've got a travel horror story, you ain't got nothing on a flight attendant. One night, my girlfriend's phone woke us up at 3 AM. She was on call and was needed immediately for a flight from Anchorage (we're in Seattle). It's about 40 minutes to the airport and this was a "short call", meaning she needed to be there in less than 2 hours! She and 5 of her co-workers, had to jump out of bed and haul ass to the airport where they boarded an empty flight to Anchorage. They were there to relieve a crew that didn't receive the legal minimum rest time due to a weather delay. While they were in the air, scheduling decided "fuck the FAA regulations" and put the overworked crew back on a plane anyway. So my girlfriend's crew arrives, finds that the flight they were supposed to work has already departed, and the pilot who brought them required a legal rest period. So they were required to spend the night in Alaska and take another empty flight home. It was the dead of winter, so it was far too cold to go anywhere outside the hotel. All in all, the crew received one days worth of per diem and no compensation for either flight, as they were "dead heading", which is unpaid. That per diem is fixed for "domestic" travel, so it's relative value varies by destination. It generally doesn't even cover the cost of meals in Alaska.

Fuck airlines.

> who sends a 10 year old across the country on a plane alone? I wouldn't send a 10 year on a 30min bus ride alone.

Wow. Overprotective much? At 10 I went to school by bus, alone, with 2 or 3 changes along the way (and a ~10 minutes walk between home and the bus station), total travel time was maybe 45~60mn and same thing the other way around in the evening. And I had friends boarding who took the train at the beginning and end of the week, same age, hours of travel on their own.

> Maybe it's a cultural difference and this is common in the US (is it?)

I'm not in the US, and I'd definitely consider that fine. Taking the plane is probably less common around here but considering the plane culture of the US I don't see any issue with it.

> I understand United offers a service to make this possible but it seems like a ridiculous thing for a parent to take advantage of.

1. No it's not, the whole point of the service is to use it.

2. I'm pretty sure United created the service because parents were already sending children across the country by plane alone, that's not a rare occurrence. Most children of 8 or 10 are reasonably bright and can actually take care of themselves reasonably well unless you spent 10 years making them completely dependent.