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.
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Usually minors are accompanied by an airline employee to ensure they get to their destination okay. I’m surprised Spirit Airlines didn’t do this
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When the US Parcel Service was first introduced, a few people mailed their children.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-children-sent-through-mail-180959372/
The first case was an 8 month old baby being delivered to his grandparents a few miles away by the postal worker on his route.
A more extreme case was a 4 year old sent 73 miles; a cousin who was a clerk with the rail mail service apparently accompanied her.
One of my husband’s ancestors was shipped across Texas by train as a child.
Even in Europe it’s legal to let the airline deal with your kids. Personally I think it’s insane and I would never trust them but it’s totally legal because the airline is supposed to be responsible.
Europe, Asia, the Americas… it’s legal around the world.
I did it many times with my daughter when she was young.
You have to accompany your child to the gate, where the gate agent puts a lanyard with identification and destination around her neck.
Then, flight attendants personally accompany the child into the plane, seat her, and note what seat she’s in.
I was not allowed to leave the gate until the plane was in the air.
You must designate an adult to pick the child up at the destination at the gate. They must have photo ID that matches the designation before the airline will release the child.
Children can only go on direct flights. They are not allowed on flights that change planes.
I always found the system safe and friendly. Most flights would have several kids flying alone, so the crew would usually seat them all together and would pay them a lot of attention during the flight.
Around age twelve or thirteen, they no longer count as an unaccompanied minor. At that point, they can just fly like any regular passenger. To me, that’s the more sketchy situation. I’d rather see that happen around age sixteen or so.
Different Americans think different things. There’s no way in hell I’d let my kid fly alone at six!