Something doesn’t add up with this unaccompanied minor story

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United at Newark
There is a story coming out today on a number of different news sites stating that United put a 14-year-old passenger on the wrong connecting flight. He was set to go to Stockholm on SAS but ended up on a Eurowings flight to Düsseldorf. Those two flights board next to each other and the gate agents are the same contract staff for both airlines

However, when I read through them, something does not add up.

From the Yahoo News! story:

A parent is blaming “the idiots” at United Airlines for putting his 14-year-old son on the wrong international flight, which would have taken him to Germany, instead of his intended destination, Sweden.

The young boy, Anton Berg, flew as an “unaccompanied minor” on June 30 with United Airlines from Raleigh, Durham, N.C. to Newark, N.J. From there, his connecting flight was supposed to take him directly to his destination, Stockholm, with Scandinavian Airlines, but he got on a flight to Dusseldorf, operated by Eurowings, instead.

So a 14-year-old traveling alone as an unaccompanied minor was put on the wrong connecting flight. Per the same article, United has apologized:

United Airlines has since refunded the $150 fee charged for directing the unaccompanied minor. In a statement provided to Yahoo Lifestyle, a representative said that the airline has “been in frequent contact with the young man’s family to confirm his safety and to apologize for this issue.”

What doesn’t add up is that the story and United’s unaccompanied minor policy don’t match. Add on top of that, the child was connecting onto a partner flight that was being serviced by a contract set of agents and things really get complicated.

From United’s website:

Our unaccompanied minor service is for children who are 5-14 years old and traveling without a parent, legal guardian or someone who is at least 18 years old. These young travelers also need to follow certain requirements for their safety:

  • Unaccompanied minors can only travel on nonstop United or United Express® flights. They can’t use our unaccompanied minor service on codeshare flights and other flights operated by our partner airlines.
  • United does not offer unaccompanied minor service connecting to or from other airlines’ flights.
  • Children younger than 5 can’t travel as unaccompanied minors, even if they’re flying with an older unaccompanied child.
  • Unaccompanied minor service is not available for children older than 14. Young adults ages 15 to 17 can travel alone on any United- or United Express®-operated flight.
  • It costs $150 each way for every two children traveling using the unaccompanied minor service.

The unaccompanied minor “service” is really a fee to make sure that your child makes it from your care to the care of whoever is picking them up from their destination. It is not an escort/babysitting service making sure your kid gets on the correct flight. In this particular case, it sounds like the parents skirted the rules of the program to try and get United to connect their son onto an SAS flight, which is not permitted for an unaccompanied minor (it says so directly in the policy). In fact, part of the reason the airlines don’t offer connections anymore is exactly this scenario, a potentially lost child somewhere in the process.

Once the minor was in the care of the contract agents for SAS and Eurowings, there was another breakdown where it was not understood what flight the child should be on. He was inadvertently directed to the Eurowings flight by their staff, not United’s.

The whole story comes down to the parents trying to be slick and skirt the unaccompanied minor rules and having it backfire. Rather than just roll with the punches they blame the airlines (and really focus on the wrong one in my opinion). The contract staff for the two European carriers screwed up and they need to fix whatever flaw they have that let them issue a boarding pass for the wrong flight.

Turkish Airlines’ new 787-9 damaged during a photo shoot

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In case you missed it, Seth reported that Turkish Airlines’ brand new 787-9 was damaged during a photo shoot.

Reports suggest that the aircraft window melted out of its mount in the fuselage. How did it get so hot? Seems that the company was filming inside the plane and had it fitted inside and out with studio lighting to make that work. The heat from those lights caused the window to melt.

It seems like the back light was way too close to the fuselage and melted one of the electrochromatic windows. The photos are kind of crazy.

It is still not clear whether the actual carbon fiber fuselage was damaged in any way or if it was just the window.

Paint Me Unimpressed

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Images of United’s new livery hit the internet last night before the official “reveal” today in Chicago. The new paint scheme drops the gold elements from the look and replaces them with different blues.


For all the hype that United was trying to generate around the new livery, overall it appears like a very minor change done poorly. Here are some quick thoughts:

  1. The “logo” is still the globe, just simplified. United and their partners in this branding had a chance to re-imagine the globe and give us something new, but for whatever reason, they doubled down on it.
  2. The blue looks “cheap”. The particular blue that United chose for their name and around the engines has a tone to it that looks odd. Maybe it is the light in the hanger, but the color seems like something I’d see on a bad ad for hair care products.
  3. There is a ton of white. The look is minimalist but it seems overly so.
  4. There is nothing that stands out. I think this is the thing that bothers me the most. There was a real opportunity to do something interesting and new but United went the opposite direction, playing it as safe as they could while getting a “new” look.

There was a large release by United a while back on new uniforms, onboard amenities, etc. that incorporated plum and other hues of purple and it is disappointing that with the new livery they steered clear of including those colors. At the end of the day though, it is just paint. I fly inside of the plane. What I would really like to see is United focus on their soft product and customer service. Start delivering on those things and I think people will forget what colors are painted on the plane and just remember it by the name and the service they receive.

What do you think?

The Madrid Ghost Plane

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From CNN:

Officials from the Adolfo Suárez-Madrid Barajas airport are trying to find the owners of a plane that has been parked on the tarmac, without moving, for years.
Airport director Elena Mayoral submitted an official notice to the Boletín Oficial del Estado, the official gazette of the Kingdom of Spain, informing the nation of a plane in an “obvious state of abandonment” at the airport.

Once the official notice goes out, the owner has three months to get in touch with the airport otherwise the plane will be sold off at auction.

What United Should Prioritize Over Free DirecTV

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United announced today that they will be offering free DirecTV service on all 211 Boeing 737s that have the television service.

Just in time for the Big Game, United Airlines today announced that effective immediately more than 100 channels of live television will now be free on 211 Boeing 737 United aircraft equipped with seat back TV, making viewing easy gate-to-gate. In addition to offering free live DIRECTV at more than 30,000 seats, United customers also have access to hundreds of movies and TV shows available on personal devices through the airline’s collection on the United app – offering customers thousands of hours of programming in total.

While it’s a great news release (American Airlines is doing something similar for the “big game”) it glosses over the fact that United is actively removing the DirecTV equipment from the 737s that are going in for new seats or heavy maintenance. I have not heard details but I do believe the plan is to go to an all personal device streaming setup eventually. This is really an interim step on the way to that goal.


What United really should be focused on is getting Wi-Fi working consistently on their domestic fleet. I have been on a number of flights the last few months where the Wi-Fi has either not worked or been so slow that it was not worth using. I rarely watch any of the live television programming while flying, opting instead to turn it to the inflight map channel. I use my time on planes to read or catch up on work and for the latter, I need working internet. The internet service domestically on United has been abysmal. The international planes, in my experience, have fewer Wi-Fi problems, though I have had a few long flights where the internet was not working from the beginning.

It is one reason I have steered clear of United’s year long Wi-Fi subscription. I am not going to invest cash in something that does not reliably work and that cannot be easily refunded on a per flight basis. A subscription service is great in theory for people who are frequent travelers and United’s pricing for it isn’t awful. But my guess is that the people who have purchased it have not been happy. While Delta and Alaska Wi-Fi on GoGo may not be the fastest, for the most part it works all of the time. That’s the reliability I and others want with United’s inflight internet.

United needs to focus their attention on some of the basic things that makes their product worth flying rather than trying to match Delta in hopes to lure a few more customers with shiny things. I want on-time performance, good schedules, working Wi-Fi, and friendly customer service. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Bartending in Antartica

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From Atlas Obscura:

No one owned Club 90 South, and no one paid. Instead, people shared supplies they brought from home (as part of the allocated 125 pounds of luggage per person) or bought from the station store. Bartenders did not earn salaries—only kudos. Broughton started tending bar Fridays and Saturdays, and soon he spent most nights after dinner mixing cocktails and pouring a “disturbing number” of Prairie Fire shots, which Broughton made with tabasco and tequila. He served absinthes from the astrophysics team, Black Seal rum from a Bermudan at McMurdo Base, and Bundaberg rum from an Australian. Mixing his research job with his side hustle, Broughton made cocktails using liquid nitrogen, bringing the haute cuisine trend of molecular mixology to the bottom of the world.

Life at the bottom of the world sounds interesting, to say the least.

“It’s Complicated” with Facebook

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Like a lot of people, I have considered ending my relationship with Facebook. There are plenty of reasons why…

The Reading Room by Susan Jane Golding
The Reading Room by Susan Jane Golding

Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information

“I think that many users don’t fully understand how ad targeting works today: that advertisers can literally specify exactly which users should see their ads by uploading the users’ email addresses, phone numbers, names+dates of birth, etc,” said Mislove. “In describing this work to colleagues, many computer scientists were surprised by this, and we’re even more surprised to learn that not only Facebook, but also Google, Pinterest, and Twitter all offer related services. Thus, we think there is a significant need to educate users about how exactly targeted advertising on such platforms works today.”

#deletefacebook

“Facebook is using us. It is actively giving away our information. It is creating an echo chamber in the name of connection. It surfaces the divisive and destroys the real reason we began using social media in the first place – human connection. — It is a cancer.”

The Facebook hack affecting 50 million people also let the attackers access users’ Tinder, Spotify, and Instagram accounts

“So what happened? In short, the attackers found a way to trick Facebook into issuing them “access tokens” — basically, digital keys — that let them access other users’ accounts as if they were that user. After spotting some unusual activity earlier this month, Facebook realized what was going on on Tuesday evening and subsequently revoked these access tokens before disclosing the hack publicly on Friday — though not before 50 million people were affected.”

The problem is that giving up Facebook is more complicated than simply deleting it and moving on. I know a lot of people say “your real friends have your number, they’ll call or text you” but I have a number of friends who are spread across the globe. Sure a call or a text would be great but with time zones and internet connections, the easiest way to stay in touch is with Facebook or WhatsApp or Instagram. Facebook and Instagram give this passive way of communicating and keeping up while WhatsApp is an easy way to have a chat without having to worry about what time it is where my friends are.

Deep down I don’t really care about browsing Facebook for general updates, but for friends that I do like to stay in touch with, it has becoming an easy place to post photos or life updates. Because of that I keep using it. The problem is that Facebook is “easy”. I know, I know, there are alternatives like Telegram, which I do use, or Yammer for groups. But these require another website/login. Facebook is easy for family and friends to upload things, write posts, etc. without having to worry about another service or login and since tons of people already use it, they are instantly connected.

Again, I know what you’re going to say, “the only way to get people to start using other tools is to leave yourself”. You are probably right and I have come very close to just leaving Facebook and relying on this site and Flickr to stay in touch with people. Each time I get close to leaving I see a post from a friend about something awesome in their life or some sad news and I get dragged back in. Maybe it is one of those things where I just cut the Facebook cord and move on. The repercussions get felt later on and maybe they just aren’t that bad.

What would you do? Have you left Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp yet? If so, how has it gone?

San Diego’s Smart Streetlights

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From IEEE Spectrum:

San Diego’s network of smart streetlights, which has been rolling out since early 2018, continues to grow. To date, some 2,000 of the sensor-laden devices have begun gathering pictures, sounds, and other data.

So far, the city has focused on the image data, using it to count pedestrians and cars as they move around the city. This data is only just starting to feed into the way the city designs and manages traffic flows, and any consumer applications remain far in the future, says Erik Caldwell, the city of San Diego’s interim deputy chief operating officer for smart and sustainable communities. Officials are still talking through all other possible applications, such as using the streetlights to locate gunshots, track airport noise, or monitor air quality.

The amount of data generated over time will be enormous and San Diego seems to be doing a bit of experimentation to see what kind of applications they can build around that data. And they aren’t alone, Atlanta, Georgia is also embarking on a pilot program to install smart streetlights.

One downside is the maintenance that will be involved with such sensors. Streetlights are important safety devices for cities but if the “smart” piece of them is not reliable over time or through storms, the upkeep might be their downfall.

United unveils new uniforms

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From Today in the Sky:

United Airlines employees will get their first look Wednesday at new uniforms that will soon roll out to all 70,000 of the carrier’s frontline workers.

The new line comes with a distinct look that includes colors like “Pacific Blue,” “Premium Purple,” and “Atlantic Amethyst” — all among a half-dozen hues that United first teased this past August.

I don’t quite understand the aquamarine color scheme and to be honest I am not a huge fan of the rest of the options either. The one style of men’s sports coat is strange, with silver stitching at the pockets, really makes it look dated.

What do you think?

American Airlines Considers Ending Ticket Changes If Congress Limits Fees

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From Bloomberg:

American Airlines Group Inc. would consider barring passengers from changing nonrefundable tickets if Congress limits what carriers can charge for the adjustments, Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker said Tuesday.

This is coming from some legislation making its way through Congress:

Doing away with changes to nonrefundable fares would make airline flights more like baseball games or concerts, where customers aren’t typically reimbursed if they buy tickets and can’t use them. Carriers currently consider the ability to change a nonrefundable ticket as a service that carries a cost. Such fees, which run up to $200, anger many passengers.

The language limiting what carriers can charge for ticket changes is being supported by consumer groups as a bipartisan provision. It is in a version of an aviation-policy bill sponsored by Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Parker called the proposal “really bad for consumers” last week.

I can’t say I blame American Airlines. Change fees have been around since the days of regulated aviation in the U.S. and the only reason I can think of to change the rules now is to appease some percentage of the voting public.

Is a limitation on the cost of change fees good for the consumer? On the surface, it’s easy to say yes, but when you dig into how airlines oversell flights and offer last minute seats or adapt to weather situations, I think the answer becomes a more complex “no”. Maybe Congress should simply focus on the transparency of the fares and underlying fare rules. If it becomes clear what consumers can and cannot do on a fare, rather than having to dig through pages and pages of fare rules, it becomes easier to make decisions.