Swiss [airline] forgot my child.

Complaints Corner
1
In Feb I sent my daughter (9) to her father using the UM service with Swiss. We've used it lots before. BA don't do UM anymore so it's either fly Swiss or fly with her (which adds up to six flights).

Anyway, I was waiting for my ex to let me know she arrived, but he hadn't texted. He had forgotten before so I wasn't too worried.

I should have been, because when she got of the plane at Heathrow there was no-one to meet her. The gate staff person stayed with her whilst they searched for the escort, but he had disappeared without a trace. Eventually the gate staff person took my daughter through immigration to her dad.

Of course, she was held up in immigration because she was not with the official person and they questioned her UM form, but that was a couple of minutes.

Once the lovely lady met my ex she explained what happened, or didn't, and said she was going to put in a complaint about her not being collected.

The next day (once I calmed down) I phoned Swiss to complain (as my contract is with Swiss), and the lovely lady said she would get to the bottom, kept calling Heathrow (and me to let me know what was happening) until eventually (c3 hours?) they said that the companion service apparently didn't know she was on the plane. Anyway, turns out I had phoned the ticketing and reservation number, and they said I should fill out the online complaints form to there would be a proper investigation into what caused the failure and hopefully prevent it happening again.

I did.

17 days later the opened the case. On the 32nd day after I complained they sent me an email saying 'Our service partner has confirmed that your daughter was collected upon arrival from the aircraft shortly after disembarkation was complete.' and that was held up at UKBF which is why she was delayed.

I said no, this is what happened, please investigate. no response.

I waited a week and asked again for them to investigate, or at least respond.

No response.

I phoned my legal insurance people and they say that there is nothing they could do to force them to investigate how a child was forgotten. And she saod the only thing I can do is leave a factual and non-offensive review.

So now, I am going 'public'.

Does anyone know where else I can complain? Is there like an Ombudsman or something?

2
When we've used the UM service with Swiss, the escort collects them Swiss side, accompanies them to the aircraft, cabin crew takes over (well, gives them a drink and checks on them every so often), they are met by someone Manchester side and brought to the arrivals area. Adult collecting child signs the form, job done.

I didn't for a minute think that a rep from Swiss flies the whole way and back.

If it went tits up in Heathrow, it's probably something went wrong there rather than with Swiss.

3
No doubt something went tits up at Heathrow. But when I asked Swiss (who I had the contract with) to find out what went tits up, they refuse to acknowledge that anything went tits up at all.

But yes, someone forgot my child that I had entrusted to Swiss. Do you have any idea how I can find out who and why?

And, normally what happens with me is I take her to the gate at Zurich the stewards look after her on the plane, and she is met by someone at Heathrow.

4
Similar advice to above. The procedure is that they check the child in at the airport with you, there is a lot of documentation, then at Zurich I usually accompany my child to the gate, where they are handed over from ticket-checking staff to the flight team. Someone takes her then to the plane and they help her if she needs it during the flight. When she arrives, someone from the arrival team does the same - either they walk the child all the way from the plane with the same team through customs, or they hand over at some point to ground staff/gate staff who are responsible for taking her through customs, and to the waiting parent.

It sounds only like the person who walked her off the plane did not know who to hand her over to on the ground, and then the wait at Heathrow is a disaster.

Very likely the crew who do the flight have a very short turn-around and so they do hand-off to someone who is supposed to walk the child through from the gate to the arrivals area...

Plus, you are relying on a 9 year old's version of events. It may have felt like they were 'searching for someone' but that's how it is/was at Zurich too - they have to allocate someone to leave their desk to do the walk through... and they may simply have needed to double-check which staff member was authorised to leave their counter to do the walk-through, knowing it can be quite lengthy at passport control...

Did they lose the child ? No - Did they at any time leave her unaccompanied ? No...

It's not a seamless, door to door accompanying service, it's a series of assistants who are allocated at each stage...

5
That's really a terrible experience. Here Swiss may not be at fault exactly but their attitude of not showing any remorse is very bad.

My wife once traveled long haul with my daughter. That time she was less than 2 year old. My wife had very bad service experience during flight. She complained online and received following message after a month or so. I doubt they really improved anything.

Dear Ms. xxx

Thank you very much for being in touch with us regarding your experience on your trip.

On behalf of SWISS, please accept my apologies and for replying late

Our aim at SWISS is always to offer a satisfying experience, I am really sorry that we were not able to offer you our usual service and I completely understand your disappointment.

I will forward your concerns to the relevant department regarding your experience and I promise you that is not the way we operate.

We really appreciate feedbacks from our guests regarding their experience with SWISS and we do take them seriously and into much consideration so that in the next future we improve on it.

We hope that, despite this incident, we will have the pleasure to welcome you on board with SWISS in the future.

Yours sincerely

xxx

6
She did know who to hand her off to, she had seen him 'downstairs', but he disappeared and never came to the gate to collect her. After searching for ages (including checking the toilets) she gave up and brought her through.

I am not solely relying on a 9-year old. I am also relying on what my ex husband told me the gate staff person told him, and what the call centre staff told me heathrow told them.

Luckily the lady decided to stay with her and bring her through, but she was not authorised to do so as far as I know. And she was fuming about the fact the companion service never showed up.

7
Do you have a copy of the documents that would have been signed at each handover ? That may give you a name that you can follow up...

8
My guess is that you'll never have a straight answer. Disturbing as the experience probably was, they didn't lose your daughter and she was eventually handed over. Swiss will probably blame Heathrow and Heathrow will blame Swiss, but I don't think either entity will treat it as a priority.

Had they actually lost your daughter, i.e., she'd been left to fend for herself down the aircraft steps and find her way through passport control and perhaps wandered through to another terminal by mistake, lost her baggage, etc., I think you would have had a stronger case to give them a bollocking and ask for your money back (it's bloody expensive, isn't it??), plus they would definitely have to look at their processes.

9
No, the only signatures required are those of the person (e.g. parent) picking them up. they don't sign for each transfer companion-gate-plane-gate-companion.

10
You could always write a stinking review of their UM service on their FB and Twitter pages. That normally gets companies squirming.

11
Sure, but you'd thought that they would want to find out what went wrong and prevent the next child becoming like Tom Hanks in that movie where he lives in the terminal.

And yes, 70 chuff is a lot, but I am not bothered about getting my money back, that is not the issue. The issue is there was a breakdown in the chain somewhere and they do not appear to want to find out where.

12
Your daughter was handed over and signed for. She never got lost or was abandoned. That an employee was upset the companion tasked to do the handover went AWOL is really neither here nor there, she was probably upset at having to stand in and do some extra work.

True, Swiss are responsible but they got her safely to LHR and from there LHR staff took over. Personally I'd put it behind me and not try to flog a dead horse.

Also interesting to see BA no longer provide this service. Perhaps too many parents kicking up a fuss over something about nothing and shouting for compensation (which I know you're not doing) pushed them in that direction.

Take it further on FB / Twitter by all means and you may find Swiss no longer offer the service and you'll have to fly with her in the future.

13
To be fair, the OP never claimed her child was lost or abandoned . Whoever was supposed to collect the child didn't show up. They either forgot or didn't give a fig. That shouldn't happen.

14
That's exactly what the lawyer said to do. It's silly as I would rather they reacted to the complaint itself, than to the bad publicity about the complaint. It doesn't make a lot of business sense to wait until everyone and their brother knows that something went wrong before you try to prevent it happening again IMO,

There are very strict laws in the UK about who is and who is not allowed to work with children. They have to be police checked. Just because nothing happened this time, it does not make it OK.

You might think this is a fuss over something or nothing but the UM service is used and trusted by a lot of parents, because there are clear rules as to how it is meant to work The website says ' At the destination After landing, our assistance staff will welcome the child at the gate and take him or her through passport control and customs. The person who is collecting the child must arrive punctually at the terminal, be a legal adult and have identification.' This did not happen. They forgot her.

Of course she was never alone, the gate staff member was wonderful, but she was probably not authorised or insured, or maybe even not police checked, to take a child through immigration.

BA stopped the service about the same time they stopped giving out drinks and snacks on the plane and opened a on-board shop for these things. Basically, when they started to have more of a budget airline service. I don't think it was anything to do with complaints but a more economic decision.

Exactly.

15
Oh they will , and I'd be taking this to the top. This is exactly the scenario that heads should roll for. It definitely needs to be escalated, particularly as your latest response is a total misrepresentation of events.

As your husband is in the UK, and the incident happened in the UK, you could launch a two pronged 'attack' by using the Resolver tool

https://www.resolver.co.uk/freeadvic...nse-complaints

From Switzerland, I would be calmly composing an email with all the bullet points of the issue you've encountered. When you're quite happy that this email is dispassionate, clear and factual, email it to the CEOs or COOs of Swiss. It will be filtered out by their P.A.s and redirected to the correct department, most likely the core customer service team.

One of two things happened here. Either Swiss didn't communicate the request to the ground assistance team at Heathrow, or the assistance team overlooked the request. Either scenario is absolutely not acceptable in any way, shape or form. If the fault is with the LHR assistance team, Swiss pay for access to that service, it is most likely contractual, and Swiss can impose hefty financial penalties when 'mistakes' like this occurr. It's in the best interests of Swiss to get to the bottom of the matter.

You could always take this to Lufthansa if Swiss are being obstructive. As the parent company, they have something of an obligation too, and may be the overall company that holds the contract with the LHR ground assistance service.

Edit: Forgot to mention... Please raise this directly with Swiss on their Twitter or Facebook pages. All companies hate detrimental publicity on social media and tend to respond quickly.

16
Honestly, this thread completely turns me off the UM service.

OP - hope that you writing here will improve the flying experience (and their legal guardians' at home) as an UM.

17
Thank you for the advice and links. And for understanding why I am reacting like this.

As for social media. The only reason I got a response after 32 days was because the social media monitor saw me writing on fb and twitter on the 6th of march (and later the 14th) asking for a response to my complaint from the 11th Feb, and responded that "I wrote to the management from our customer service asking them to grant your case the highest priority. Kind regards (name)" I got the response a day later.

18
To be fair, I am pretty sure it hardly ever happens. Of course, if they know how it happened it is much less likely to happen again..........

The legal advice person I spoke to today used to be an air stewardess for Swiss for 15 years and she said she'd never had anything like it happen to her (I said I had......).

Luckily my daughter is a frequent user of the service and knows what to expect, and most people are decent human beings that will go out of their way for a child. She was fine and she wasn't worried about her return flight at all.

But yes, it worries the life out of me now too. I always had in the back of my head, what if there is a diversion to another airport, or another such problem. I never worried that they would forget to escort her.

I have not booked her on for summer yet. And we are going to Paris by train rather than flying.

19
This being the response that denies anything went wrong at all?

You know you've got to push back on this and clearly state that it's not acceptable. Perhaps ask a friend to write the next email so that they can take the heat out of it. Split it into... event / expectation / current outcome / future expectation / future outcome which would be acceptable.

Key points would be:

This happened and I see it as my responsibility, as a parent, to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Swiss have a duty of care.

Swiss have broken their contract with you

and

LHR ground assistance have broken their contractual obligation to Swiss.

Customer services have currently failed to offer an acceptable and truthful account of events, and have also failed to offer an acceptable outcome that offers reassurance to you, the client.

I don't get the feeling from you that you wish to take Swiss to court and throw the book at them. I don't even get the feeling that you want compensation over and above any fee you may have been charged for the service.

What would put your mind at rest is:

A full written apology from Swiss

A full written account of what went wrong.

An account of what has been done to prevent this event from happening again.

Implicit assurance from Swiss that this will not happen again.

20
All that, except I am not bothered about the fee being returned. And an apology is not a high priority for me, but the rest, yes.