I give up.

BA was short, unfriendly and and just basically gave one statement

AA was understanding, friendly and gave it a try, at the end referring to BA and at least provided information (when the next flight is).

None of them broke the law as none told me where my relatives were. One of them, BA, left me frustrated, the other not, even though the outcome was the same. I am not debating who should have not said what. I am debating the friendliness of their service since quite a few post but apparently few are getting that. And I forgot of course that this is a predominantly UK forum...

You are being somewhat disingenuous. In the first post on this thread, you posed the question:
Your question has been answered in a friendly, helpful and professional manner by those who know about these things. That's why we like Pprune. You might at least have the decency to say thank you.

Well I would try and be friendly too if I knew that at the end I could blame someone else for faillure ;)

Grimmrad,
when I despatched my 15 year old daughter to hkg to one of her mates, on her own, I had concerns, especially as he did not get in touch for a couple of days. (She e-mailed us eventually)

So you have my empathy!

However, I knew that BA just would not tell me whether or not she had got on the flight, and whether or not she had got off at hkg. That's just how it is.

BA call centre people can be lots of things, but empathetic and mature is not always one of their strengths.

The understanding, friendly and giving-it-a-try AA call centre (who appear to have been blithely unaware of the existence of privacy laws...)

The classic Somerset Maugham quotation comes to mind:

"The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication."

Vote with your feet. If there is a next time, boycott BA......simples!

I am not American nor British (but European, nevertheless)

I indeed got my answer and for those who tried to respond in a serious and non cynical way I am really grateful. I have learned my lesson and know what to do better next time.

Some comments but agreed not all, had a sarcastic and cynic undertone in it, which was not helpful. Maybe BA personnel ;)

Time to close the thread.

Having a chip on both shoulders doesn't necessarily equate with a balanced opinion....

Grimmrad

You started this thread with a complaint about not being given information that you thought you had a right to.

Now we're on page 3 it's turned into a complaint about a BA person not being friendly on the phone...

Well said, this is turning into a Bore Off thread. Answers have been given and the OP, for whatever reasons, doesn't seem to like them.:ouch:

What did he expect from PPRuNers?:ok:

See post 47. Nothing more to say.

I call troll ~
How many 8 year olds couldnt find a way to charge a phone for grandma.

Its been an entertaining read.

Depending where you live there may be a local BA office nearby or at the airport you would meet them, failing that an AA office may be able to get the info. If you had turned up in person with proof of your identity and that your child was who you said, birth certificate, I expect they then would have a legal obligation to give you any info you asked for about their travel progress.

Good point, thank you. Moot point though now thank god.

Edit: Glad someone got another stupid comment out of it.

Just to remain on thread: god had nothing to do with it. The airline did it's job and people in PPRuNe did their job.

= Result :ok:

Some of us come every day up against rules and laws that 9 of us don't need but they are there to protect us from the 1 in 10 that might do something bad if that law/rule were not in place.

It's a bad world out there; and those of us who play by the rules and expect a little consideration from a big company to break the civil law can end up frustrated by legal red tape and protections.

But there you are.

There probably isn't anybody here who would not understand the need to find out if a child and his gran are okay. But the process to do that was hampered by law.

It was illegal for BA to tell you. Not sure how much clearer that is, however logically barmy it may sound on the face of it.

I think regular travelers through British airports will confirm that a man entering the country with his young son will often be stopped by border agents and questioned at length about his parentage--due to the emphasis on child trafficking right now.

Of course the parent will be put off .... but in the larger picture, it's understandable.

It's all about protecting the kids who aren't so fortunate as to be traveling with a caring parent.

So it's not just BA protecting information from "strangers," it's a more comprehensive child protection scheme as well I think.

Rarely a truer word spoken....

Gimmrad:

A US airline would (these days) do nothing different from what BA did. And please don't say that AA did anything different. All it offered to do was to contact BA. It did not give you any information about your son -- and even if he had been on an AA flight, I doubt that they would have given you the information you wanted.

By not declaring your son to be an unaccompanied minor, he was just a regular passenger. The same as the several hundred thousand that BA also carried that day. They, or any other airline, cannot be expected to notify you of any passenger's whereabouts.

That over, let's talk about what you could have done.

1. Rely on Grandma notifying you of the information. But this is between you and her. Note, there were many methods available for her to achieve this task.

2. Send your son as a declared unaccompanied minor.

3. Finally, rather than demanding that BA tell you where your son is (if, indeed, they even know), instead request that BA tell your son (or Grandma) that they urgently need to get get in contact with you. The latter is a potentially feasible request.

Think of a hotel analogy. Desk clerks will not tell you a guest's room number, but they will call the guest and let you talk to them.

SeenItAll: He was an accompanied minor (Grandma) - but I had indeed thought about asking BA to ask them to please contact us but at that time they had already called. It's a good idea anyway.

I think my point by now having learned my lesson from other posters multiple times, was the way BA treated me versus AA. Yes, they both couldn't give me the information. But the AA representative was polite and understanding, trying to find something out while BA just blocked everything right away with "can't tell you". Its like two restaurants, one with friendly nice service and the other with grumpy and not polite one. Where would you eat again?

Given that neither of the 'restaurants' gave you any food it's slightly irrelevant. BA said they couldn't tell you, AA said they'd ring BA then said they couldn't tell you. Is there really a difference? It's like one restaurant saying "We won't serve you" and the other saying "Welcome, take a seat, here's the menu, what would you like, let me go and ask the manager whats on special tonight for you..................oh he says we won't serve you, I'm sorry, have a lovely day."