Academic

Continental Airlines Loses Kid; Parent Gains Silver Elite Status

By Dan Filler

Continental Airlines, which one study ranked as #5 for handling luggage, appears to have particular trouble with misplaced child passengers.  This weekend was particularly problematic for the airline, according to press accounts:

In one case, an 8-year-old Texas girl wound up in Fayetteville, Ark., instead of Charlotte, North Carolina. The other was a 10-year-old Massachusetts girl who was supposed to fly from Boston to Cleveland, but wound up in Newark.

Talk about a PR nightmare!  Never fear, however. Responsive airline officials, who initially offered a $75 refund of airfare, are now working wildly to control the damage from this story.  They've upped the offer - at least to the one parent who is a blogger.

Continental is going to refund my daughter?s entire fare and fly her back to Boston in first class for free. They are also going to refund the round-trip tickets that my in-laws bought to fly to Boston with Miriam and then back to Cleveland, and replace them with first-class tickets as well (note: they had already planned this trip before what happened on Sunday). Finally, they are giving my wife, my daughter and I ?Silver Elite? status in their frequent-flyer program, OnePass, until the end of the current program year, which apparently is next February.

Couldn't they have at least bumped them to One Pass Gold?

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on June 17, 2009 (boomark / email).