I've once witnessed how a friend of mine picked up his unaccompanied daughter from a flight in MSP.
I can assure you that handing over the daughter, who was accompanied by an airline employee at all times was not taken lightly.
They very thoroughly checked his identification and checked it towards a list of the person authorized to pick her up.
Alas, this was in the early 90s.
Unaccompanied children are not that far-out as you seem to imagine and virtually any airline (I can speak for Europe and the US, but that probably also goes for Asian carriers) offers the service.
However, it shouldn't be outsourced to some dodgy outfit, which "forgets to send a representative" to pick her up for connecting flight. No matter. It's United's 100% responsibility and the only comfort is that they pay an extremely high price for this (in terms of publicity).
There is simply no excuse for their despicable actions here.
I can assure you that handing over the daughter, who was accompanied by an airline employee at all times was not taken lightly.
They very thoroughly checked his identification and checked it towards a list of the person authorized to pick her up.
Alas, this was in the early 90s.
Unaccompanied children are not that far-out as you seem to imagine and virtually any airline (I can speak for Europe and the US, but that probably also goes for Asian carriers) offers the service.
However, it shouldn't be outsourced to some dodgy outfit, which "forgets to send a representative" to pick her up for connecting flight. No matter. It's United's 100% responsibility and the only comfort is that they pay an extremely high price for this (in terms of publicity).
There is simply no excuse for their despicable actions here.