OTTAWA — As a frequent flyer, nine-year-old Julien Reid is used to delays. Splitting time equally between his mom in Ottawa and his dad in San Francisco, he makes the trip back and forth about six times a year.

But his odyssey back to Ottawa Saturday was enough to push even the most seasoned traveller over the edge.

"You don't even know how mad I am," Julien said to his mother, Genevieve Harte, after walking through the international gate around 10 p.m.

Having left San Francisco at 6 a.m., he was hungry, tired and ticked off after being forgotten in the children's waiting room in one of the busiest airports in the world.

Julien arrived in Chicago at 11 a.m. From there, he was supposed to catch a connecting flight at 1:50 p.m. and land in Ottawa at about 4:45 p.m.

Harte checked online and saw that his flight was delayed until 5:35 p.m. So she waited, then went to the airport to pick up her son.

Passengers from the flight disembarked, but Julien was nowhere to be found. There is no United representative at the Ottawa airport, so no one could explain what had happened.

Harte called a customer service line. An employee in a faraway call centre was apologetic, but unable to help.

Then she got a call from her son, using his own pre-paid cell.

Julien said he was still in Chicago, in the waiting room for unaccompanied minors and other flyers with special needs.

He was in a "tiny, little room cramped with kids," where they played the same video on a loop all day, he said. The only food he'd been given was McDonald's, a less than satisfactory option for a vegetarian like him. He said he and the other children were yelled at "to stop being kids."

Julien told his mother bad weather had delayed his flight. But she knew that flight had actually already landed in Ottawa, as she'd seen the other passengers get off.

She told Julien to put her on the phone with the United attendant charged with watching the children.

It was this frazzled attendant who let it slip, Harte said, that no one had come to fetch Julien to put him on his flight.

Harte, 36, suspects they bumped her son from an overcrowded flight without telling either of them.

"It's a lot easier to have a kid that's not going to say anything than an adult who has a business meeting that's going to scream at you in front of everybody," she said.

Julien was put on a flight that left Chicago at 7 p.m. local time, meaning he spent about eight hours in the waiting room.

Megan McCarthy, a spokeswoman for United, said the airline is sorry for the inconvenience caused by their failure to get Julien on the first connecting flight.

She also said that United is currently reaching out to Harte to provide a refund for the childcare fee and an undisclosed goodwill gesture.

Meanwhile, Julien had his own message for the airline.

"I'll tell them to get me a better flight next time," he said.