A 16-year-old unaccompanied minor was supposed to travel from Florida to his mother in Ohio on a Frontier Airlines flight, but he ended up in Puerto Rico instead.
The teen boy was supposed to fly from Tampa to Cleveland on December 22, when he was mistakingly sent to San Juan.
Frontier Director of Corporate Communications Jennifer de la Cruz said in a statement to CNN that the Ohio and Puerto Rico flights departed from the same gate, with the flight to Puerto Rico taking off first.
“Frontier has extended its sincere apologies to the family for the error,” de la Cruz said.
The teen’s father Ryan Lose told CNN that it was his son’s first time flying alone and that he suffers from anxiety.
When he arrived at the gate, the flight to Puerto Rico was boarding.
“He went up there and asked the lady if the flight was boarding, and they said, ‘yes,’ and they also checked his bag to make sure it fit,” Lose said. “But Logan said they never scanned his ticket. Logan said they just glanced at it and said, ‘Yes, you’re on the right flight,’ and then he boarded.”
“If they had scanned his boarding pass, they would’ve known my son was on the wrong plane,” Lose said.
The parents realized something was wrong when he boarded too early for his flight.
“That’s when my 9-year-old son looked up the flight status and realized that a flight to Puerto Rico had just taken off from the same gate Logan’s Ohio flight was taking off from,” Lose said.
The family tried to call and warn him that he was on the wrong flight before it departed, but his phone went straight to voicemail.
When they contacted Frontier they confirmed that he was in fact on the wrong flight.
Frontier says they flew him back on the same plane and got him on a flight to Ohio the following day.
“This whole ordeal has been stressful for everyone,” Lose told CNN.
Last week, Spirit Airlines also sent a six-year-old unaccompanied minor on the wrong flight.
The child had departed from Philadelphia and was going to visit his grandmother Maria Ramos in Fort Myers, Florida, but ended up about four hours away in Orlando.
“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,’” Ramos told WINK News. “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.’”
Eventually, her grandson called her and explained where he was.
Spirit Airlines offered to reimburse Ramos for the long drive, but she wants answers about how it happened.
“I want them to call me. 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?” asked Ramos.
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