Spirit Airlines issued an apology after putting a six-year-old unaccompanied minor on the wrong flight.
The child was set to fly on Thursday from Philadelphia International Airport to Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, Florida, to visit his grandmother, WINK-TV reported.
Instead, the boy was “incorrectly boarded” on a flight to Orlando, Spirit acknowledged in a statement on Saturday.
The statement did not address how the error came to take place - during a busy holiday travel day.
I had a job of escorting kids flying alone. This kind of thing was SUPER rare, and the kids were treated really well. I’d have no problem sending my own daughter on a trip alone if I knew they were doing things the same way. But to give some reasons why a kid would fly alone:
Parents are divorced and live across the country
Kids are going to camp in the Midwest
Grandma and Grandpa live in Paris this summer and want the grandkid to visit
For a parent to fly with the kid would roughly triple the flight cost (kid, round trip for parent to fly one way, and another for the return trip), take a lot of time for a parent that just may not be feasible with working schedule (yes, non-shitty parents work too) and if the trip involves crossing an ocean jet lag from a redeye flight with immediate turnaround will fuck anyone up