A worrying article about airline travel

Personally worrying for me because I've got two sons flying Northwest this week and both of them are going through Detroit. Cullen actually has three flights to get to Alaska, Cam has two coming back.

The article ran in WaPo and is quite disheartening.

Thousands of children fly unaccompanied each day on U.S. airlines -- an estimated 650,000 fly alone on United, American and Southwest airlines annually, with the heaviest loads occurring in the summer and over the holidays, the carriers say. This summer travel season, the youths are being thrown into the very adult mix of delays, cancellations and fewer airline employees help them. Already, delays are at high levels, with more than 30 percent of flights arriving late or being canceled in June, up from 25 percent last year, according to the flight-tracking service Flightstats.com.

Last month, Blake Gammell was waiting at the gate at the Pensacola, Fla., airport to pick up his 11-year-old nephew after a Northwest Airlines flight. A gate worker had him sign the paperwork to take custody of the boy after the flight arrived. But when Gammell looked down at the child in front of him, he was puzzled. Instead of his nephew, he was staring at a 9-year-old girl. The airline had mixed up the children and put them on the wrong flights.