Boy, 6, put on wrong plane and flown hundreds of miles away on traumatic first unaccompanied flight
Boy, 6, put on wrong plane and flown hundreds of miles away on traumatic first unaccompanied flight
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A six-year-old boy flying alone for the first time ended up on the wrong plane and landed hundreds of miles away from his intended destination.
Casper was supposed to fly on a Spirit Airlines plane to visit his grandmother in Fort Myers, south-west Florida, on December 21.
However, his grandmother, Maria Ramos, was gobsmacked when she was told that her grandson was not on the intended flight.
The child ended up in Florida, whilst his bag arrived in Fort Myers, in a plot that could be mistaken for the Christmas classic film Home Alone.
The 6-year-old ended up in Orlando Airport mistakenly
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She told a local news outlet: “They told me, 'No, he's not on this flight. He missed his flight.' I said, 'No, he could not miss his flight because I have the check-in tag.’”
“I ran inside the plane to the flight attendant, and I asked her, ‘where’s my grandson? He was handed over to you at Philadelphia’. She said, ‘No, I had no kids with me’.”
The young child had ended up on a plane to Orlando, 160 miles from his intended destination.
Ramos only learned that her grandson was in Florida when he phoned her himself to tell her.
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She described the experience as one of the scariest of her life.
Fortunately, her grandson was safe in Orlando, and she made the long drive to pick him up.
Spirit Airlines has offered to reimburse her for the cost of the petrol, however, Ramos wants more than that.
The grandmother is adamant for an explanation of how this could have happened.
It was the first time the six-year-old had travelled alone (not pictured)
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“I want them to call me,” Ramos told WINK-TV.
“Let me know how my grandson ended up in Orlando. How did that happen? Did they get him off the plane? The flight attendant – after mom handed him with paperwork – did she let him go by himself? He jumped in the wrong plane by himself?”
Spirit Airlines said in a statement that they “take the safety and responsibility of transporting all of our Guests seriously and are conducting an internal investigation. We apologize to the family for this experience.”
They said that Casper was “always under the care and supervision of a Spirit team member and as soon as we discovered the error, we took immediate steps to communicate with the family and reconnect them”.