Wow! What an ordeal. Look on the brighter side, at least the noticed the plane's mechanical problem while it was still on the ground!

When my brothers were 12 and 14, they flew an escorted flight to Northern Canada. The escorts were just hired to walk them to the terminals.

Well, my mom goes to pick them up in San Fransisco, and they aren't there! She contacts the escort who swears she saw them off to the terminal on the flight from Vancouver to San Fransisco. The airlines give my mom a bunch of crap about how it is private information on where my brothers are.

So, my mom calls me hysterical of course. I was on the phone with the airlines for hours trying to figure out where my brothers were. The kept insisting that they don't give information on where passengers are. Finally, by about 3 am (she'd went to pick them up at 6 pm) they tell me that they'd overbooked the flight and my brothers are staying somewhere in Vancouver. But they can't tell me where. And they assure us that they'd asked my brothers to call and tell us where they were.

So, about 10pm the following night, my brothers called from San Fransisco airport. They were all giddy because at their age, they got to ride taxis, got to stay in a big hotel, had an unlimited room service allowance at the hotel, and got a flight to anywhere in the US. They said they didn't call us because they were afraid we'd say no. They lied to the airlines and said they'd called us.

We were so pissed!