Jetstar cabin crew offload young pax from flight

[harvyk]

I agree with medhead on this one...

Most teenagers will talk up their age. Furthermore school ID's are not automatically handed out... For my school they where only handed out for students over the age of 15, even then they had to be applied for, and even then they did not cover a full year.

Most 13 and 14 year olds are secondary school students... They are usually too old for primary school and the law requires they attend schooling which narrows down what they could be doing...

 

[ozbeachbabe]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]a very interesting point here........... self serve check in........ [/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]JQ is heading down the path of near 100% self check in.......... [/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]pax can agree to what they like when typing into a screen because no human intervention until pax goes thru boarding gate. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]will JQ crew take a guess on age when a young pax passes thru.... [/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]this could be left to certain abuse as JQ is aimed at the younger and leisure traveller and with their hot turnarounds, will certainly put a lot more pressure/responsibility on cabin crew perhaps? [/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]with all this whizz bang technology, the airlines are really their own worst enemies!! [/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]but it is not to say PAX will test it!![/FONT]

I don't know whether they used a kiosk or not, however as they had luggage they still would have had to do a bag drop with staff. It's when people OLCI or use kiosks with no baggage that they sometimes slip underneath the radar.

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]I don't fault the cabin crew if they followed procedure, but I must say I'm a little confused by the circumstances on the ground. It seems like Jetstar's policy needs to be rewritten so that ozbeachbabe's emphasised may becomes will. [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]The ambiguity in Jetstar's policy put the passengers in an untenable position, with contrary, inconsistent procedures being applied to them. Really, it should be the ground crew's job to ensure that the kids weren't allowed to be checked in in the first place. [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Surely it's not unreasonable for unaccompanied minors (by that, I mean under 16 or 15 as lawfully appropriate, not as per Jetstar's arbitrary policy) trying to check in online to be pinged to have to check in with ground crew at the airport. If they were nevertheless allowed to get on board, then despite the cabin crew's subsequent actions, Jetstar is at fault for having a policy in place that allowed them through in the first place, and completely deserve any PR drubbing they get for it. [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]If Jetstar is serious about allowing unaccompanied minors to travel, then they really should be doing a better job at looking after them and verifying their circumstances at check in - this may even come down to the production of a passport, or other reliable ID, rather than 'secondary school' ID which, if available at all, is far from reliable. [/FONT]

As I don't work either for JQ or their ground handler Skystar & was not a 'fly on the wall' I can only report here what has been told to me by various sources. I don't think there's a way to 'ping' a booking as there's no such thing as an unaccompanied minor with JQ. The only time you can select the 'child' drop down box when making a booking is when there are also adults in the pnr. People that make bookings whether it be via a travel agent or doing it themselves online must book their kids as adults otherwise they could not complete the booking.

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]No idea why JQ's policy says 'may' instead of 'will', unless that is only put there as an 'escape' for some exceptional basis, of which I have no idea what such an example could possibly be. But reading the 'may' implies that there is some chance that it will happen (i.e. there is not 'no chance' it will happen), so why would you take that chance? (Just as if you know IDs may be checked before you enter a club, why would you risk trying to enter without an ID, even if you look over 18?) [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]There's fault on both sides here but to be fair whilst ozbeachbabe's account is pretty detailed, it doesn't describe the blow-by-blow interactions that happened and thus how we arrived at this problem in the first place.[/FONT]

The description is as detailed as can be according to the info given to me. I guess the only people who could give a blow-by-blow account of what happened are the ground staff who checked them in or the cabin crew on that flight.


[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]

I think is abundantly clear that the jetstar crew have totally failed to follow the published policy of jetstar. They have overstep the mark. I also find bits of this to be possibly misleading.

[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]For example this claim that a child saying they are 14 in august is an indication that the child was coached to talk up there age. The fact is that whether the child is 13 or 14 in august is irrelevant, as both 13 and 14 are of the secondary school age. Instead I suggest it is just the normal nature of a child to talk up it's age. I certainly did it at that age and most of my friends did as well. [/FONT]

I did, in fact state as much is the OP when I said " It didn't really matter whether it was 14 or 13 as the issue was no school ID for a couple of them".

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]In relation to ID there is no requirement stated that school ID must be available or carried. There are plenty of other ways to prove DOB and schooling status. But in any case the Jetstar policy says schooling status may be checked. It does not say it will be checked, it does not say that it has to be school ID and it does not say anything about showing the ID on board the aircraft. [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Finally a couple facts about secondary school age. I started secondary school aged 12 in year eight, I was at school with people who didn't turn 13 until Feb of year 9. These days some secondary schools start in year 7, so that would be 11 year old children. All the children were over 12 years of age. [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Given this situation I totally fail to understand why there would be any need for the children to talk up their ages. So the suggestions of coaching to do such strike me as being a complete distraction. I can only ask why such imagined coaching is consider relevant to the story at hand? [/FONT]

Re your last paragraph, had I been cabin crew on this flight I would find it extremely relevant that in one ear, a child is telling me he's not in high school and the other ear ground staff are saying the guardian told them he is in high school. Similarly if ground staff are saying the kids are 14 and 13 and the kids are saying they're 13 and twelve that would certainly be a red flag to me. You'd have to wonder what else has multiple choice answers. IMHO which is possibly contradictory to yours, it may well have been a contributing factor as to why the crew refused uplift. :!:

 

[UP4014]

One wonders what sort of ID a 12-14 year old may carry on their person each day, school id would be the last thing on many peoples minds during school holidays.

I didn't even realise schools issued photo Id's, are they chipped, do they put biometrics on them..........

I'm sure most of use here never carried ID until we started driving.

 

[markis10]

Got to say I am glad I dont fly JQ, sounds like the DRW operation is just a mess with the way its implemented, as a comparison I have had nothing but great service from the QF team up there including tracking down a lost bag during my last trip. I am leaving next Friday on an early morning QF flight ex DRW so maybe I will get to see the JQ hordes first hand!

 

[harvyk]

I didn't even realise schools issued photo Id's, are they chipped, do they put biometrics on them..........

I'm sure most of use here never carried ID until we started driving.

I know mine where not chipped, or had any security features at all... Infact they where extremely easy to copy (anyone with a scanner \ colour printer and a laminator could do it) and anyone with basic photoshop skills could easily change details (birthdays was a common thing to change, thus the reason the local grog shop didn't accept them as ID's)

 

[medhead]

I did, in fact state as much is the OP when I said " It didn't really matter whether it was 14 or 13 as the issue was no school ID for a couple of them".

Re your last paragraph, had I been cabin crew on this flight I would find it extremely relevant that in one ear, a child is telling me he's not in high school and the other ear ground staff are saying the guardian told them he is in high school. Similarly if ground staff are saying the kids are 14 and 13 and the kids are saying they're 13 and twelve that would certainly be a red flag to me. You'd have to wonder what else has multiple choice answers. IMHO which is possibly contradictory to yours, it may well have been a contributing factor as to why the crew refused uplift. :!:

Except the point is that school ID is not a listed requirement. Therefore lack of school ID cannot be an issue.

On the point of what the children say, don't jetstar crew realise that children lie all the time. The policy clearly indicates that the assessment is made at check in. (yes, is it a rather ambiguous policy) Certainly the policy doesn't say anything about the crew assessing the child. One major reason for this is that children of at age bracket make cough up all the time, for various, unfathomable reasons. I can agree that it may have been a reason that uplift was refused, but personally I think the crew are near stupid for taking the word of a child over the implied approval/assessment by an adult at check in. As the facts bear out all children were of secondary school age, given the lack of a hard rule and the talk about generally, guidance and may, that can be considered good enough to pass. (IMO)

I don't see too many people trying to fake school IDs except for identity theft, which could apply to anyone. Unless there's some new crimes I'm unaware of since my school days of ol' (not extremely long ago!)

Well we used to fake Id at school for lots of reasons besides identity theft. To get booze, to getting into clubs, to get into R movies and being in Cairns to get child tickets to the reef (yes, lowing the age on the ID) :shock:

 

[JohnK]

But that is surely JQ's problem still and not the passengers problem.

I agree. The young passengers passed through check-in/bag drop OK and if I am reading the OP correctly boarded aircraft and then aircraft pushed back before crew decided to offload the young passengers.

The problem was not helped by the grandmother of two of the kids leaving the airport prior to flight departing - as in pushback not takeoff, so was already half way back to her rural location when she received a call at 0200 ish to come back and retrieve her grandkids. To say she wasn't a happy camper would be an understatement!

Whether the crew did the right thing or not (according to Jetstar's manual) this is clearly another reason not to fly Jetstar. Too inconsistent in the very minimal service they do try to provide.

 

[samh004]

Whether the crew did the right thing or not (according to Jetstar's manual) this is clearly another reason not to fly Jetstar. Too inconsistent in the very minimal service they do try to provide.

The problem with that statement is that the cabin crew are JQ staff but the ground crew are contracted. They should both be held to the same standard though, so I hope if no one gets the sack they are at least disciplined and all staff come into line with what is right.

It’s crazy the stuff that gets past.

If they can’t do the job, time to look for a new one.

 

[drron]

Whatever the problems JQ has in DRW it seems some of the parents/guardians have a bigger proble.Flying DRW-BNE with QF on the last day of the school holidays last year there were 2 QF ground staff taken out-one to look after the unaccompanied youngsters flying to BNE whose parents had left them with QF and then a second to look after those arriving in DRW whose parents were not there to collect them-she was still with a few when we had boarded.
Didn't this incident also happen in school holidays?