United Arlines Loses A Ten-Year-Old

     United Airlines lost a ten-year-old girl and hardly seemed to care. Phoebe Klebahn had plans to go to a camp in Michigan on June 30. Annie and Perry Klebahn, Phoebe’s parents, say they waited anxiously for a phone call from Phoebe saying that she arrived safely, but instead they got a call from the camp saying that she never got there. The parents wrote a complaint letter to United Airlines.

      “According to the letter, Annie Klebahn called a customer line which connected her with United’s service centre in India. After a 20-minute wait, the person on the line told the Klebahns that their daughter had arrived in Traverse City. When Annie Klebahn got upset, she was put on hold again – for 10 minutes – and was then told Phoebe was indeed in Chicago and had missed her connection.” - CBC News. 

     The Unaccompanied Child Service in Chicago that was supposed to help Phoebe get on her flight “forgot to show up.” That service costs an extra $99. When Phoebe asked an airport attendant for help, she was told to wait. She then asked three times to contact her parents, and she was told to wait. 

     “The Klebahns said in their complaint letter they had never been told “that United outsourced the unaccompanied minor services to a third party vendor.” 

     When he [Perry Klebahn] begged the person to locate his daughter, she said she was going off shift and could not help. He pleaded with her, asking if she was a mother. When she said yes, he asked what would she do if she couldn’t locate her child for 45 minutes. In 15 minutes, the employee found Phoebe.” –CBC News

     Phoebe eventually was able to get on another flight to Michigan, but it took three days for her bags to arrive. United Airlines said, “What the Klebahns describe is not the service we aim to deliver to our customers. We are redepositing the miles used to purchase the ticket back into Mr. Klebahn’s account in addition to refunding the unaccompanied minor charge.”

     My thoughts on this are: They lost a child. Then when she asked for help and to contact her parents, they told her to wait. The parents were scared anyway because their daughter was going to another state by herself. Then they get a call from the camp saying that she never showed up. That is a parent’s worst nightmare. At that point they had no idea where their daughter was.

     They called United Airlines and they were put on hold for twenty minutes. Nobody helped until Perry Klebahn used his empathy parent powers. I honestly think that this is extremely ridiculous. I can’t even imagine what Phoebe’s parents were going through.

Sources:

CBC News

Fox News