Airline Says Child's Ticket Was 'Improperly Scanned'

United can't seem to get over its PR problems when it comes to seats on its airplanes. Of course, it probably doesn't help the airline to be under a media microscope following the incident in which a passenger was dragged off a plane in Chicago.

The most recent incident occurred on a flight from Houston to Boston on June 29th. Fox News reports that Shirley Yamauchi had purchased a ticket for her 27-month-old son Tazio in accordance to United's policy, and they had boarded the plane and were seated. But later, a person said he also had a ticket for the seat in which Tazio was sitting, and insisted that he was taking it.

Yamauchi and Tazio were on the final leg of an 18-hour flight from Hawaii, and she told Hawaii News Now that she did not want to make a fuss, in part because she was Asian and she had seen what hat happened to the United passenger in April. She said she did try to get some help from a flight attendant, but was told the FA couldn't do anything about the situation. Tazio sat on his mother's lap from Houston to Boston.

After the flight, Yamauchi said she contacted the airline for some relief, but reportedly was told that she would need to cancel her return ticket to Hawaii in order to get a refund, according to television station KITV. The station also reports that the standby passenger who got Tazio's seat paid only $75 for the standby ticket, compared to the $969 paid by Yamauchi for the seat.

A United spokesperson told Fox News that the airline has been in contact with Yamauchi to apologize, saying that the child's ticket was incorrectly scanned at the gate. “On a recent flight from Houston to Boston, we inaccurately scanned the boarding pass of Ms. Yamauchi’s son,” said United in a statement obtained by Fox News. “As a result, her son’s seat appeared to be not checked in, and we released his seat to another customer and Ms. Yamauchi held her son for the flight. (When all else fails, blame the technology, we suppose. ed.)

"We deeply apologize to Ms. Yamauchi and her son for this experience," the statement continued. "We are refunding their tickets and providing compensation as a goodwill gesture. We are also working with our employees to prevent this from happening again.”

The airline did not specifically say she would be receiving a refund for the $2,000 she paid for the flight.

(Image from file)

FMI: Original Story