Spirit Airlines put six-year-old boy on the wrong flight alone
independent.co.uk
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.
Kevin!!!!!
They call this the Spirit Quest. If he makes it home alive, he's considered a man.
Was the flight to New York, and did they put him up at a fancy hotel?
Did he get directions from that fuckin traitor Trump in the hallway?
This is why the Canadian Cut is the canonical version of Home Alone 2.
An appropriate and artful use of Deepfake technology would be to replace trump with a different period correct actor.
Pauly Shore?
Actually, they should age up Macaulay Culkin.
Home Alone 7: Lost in Time.
Really weirdly I was actually thinking about this the other day.
I had a girlfriend that used to work in an airport and they used to have this really archaic system for keeping track of minors. It was a piece of software written in the 1980s and they had to keep computers from the time around because it was never converted for modern systems.
Occasionally the software would just stop working and it had to be reinstalled from floppy disk. When that happened they lost all the data. The backup was, and I kid you not, to take a photograph of the screen after you'd entered the data, and then email that photograph to someone who would then resubmit the data if the program had to be reinstalled.
Even if this might sound crazy to some, it doesn't sure me at all. Industries are not upgrading systems just for fun. It's only done when it is absolutely necessary.
I've worked with systems running in windows 95. On laptops so old they didn't have USB. The only way to transfer new files to it was to use serial link (we didn't have floppy drives). What did that ancient computer do? Communicate with subsea control systems for oil wells.
The entire airline industry is like that. It's part of the reason we have such big problems when one airport has flight delays- they aren't able to easily make adjustments system wide.
There's a really interesting video on YouTube about it. Link
That’s the spirit.
Airline loses 6 years of baggage....
I am glad I have never made a mistake at work lol. Every time I see a rule or a warning sign I think back to what caused it. Let’s hope the 6yo getting put on a plane without his family fixes something so it doesn’t happen again
There was no family to go with him. Unaccompanied minors can fly under the supervision of airport staff, usually for a fee. Which must already be terrifying enough for the parents even if they didn't know "losing your kid" was an option.
https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/special-assistance/unaccompanied-minors.jsp
I flew to Europe unaccompanied in the 90s at around age 12. They put a lanyard on you, you're first on the plane and last off, and a flight attendant takes you between connecting flights on a cart. There's very little unsupervised time. It's not like you can get off the plane.
I would imagine there's even more supervision, more technology as well, than when I did it. Which makes a fuckup like this fairly astounding.
Right? As an adult I couldn't get on the wrong flight if I tried. It's baffling that they wouldn't need to scan a wristband or ticket or whatever for an unaccompanied minor to 1) confirm & document their presence on the plane like everyone else and 2) make sure they are sent to the right fucking place. Also confusing because you'd think that when the first staff member shows up to the wrong gate with the kid and tries to hand them off, the flight crew would be like "wtf are you talking about, we dont have an unaccompanied minor schesuled on this flight?" I get that people make mistakes but this isn't some shit like accidentally "replying all" to an email distribution list. It's hard to fathom how something like this could happen if even the most basic and common sense procedures were followed.
I did it either domestically (US) or possibly US to Canada. All I remember is there was food, which made it way better than flying with my parents.
This would have been avoided if the child's ticket was scanned, which I can only assume must not have happened. I imagine this type of error isn't something they want to talk about any more than misdirecting a kid to the wrong destination.
How shitty of a parent must you be to force you child to fly alone?
I think the word is poor.
Most likely.
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
My kid flew alone every summer to go stay with his grandparents for two weeks, starting at age 8. The amount of security precautions that legitimate airlines use to prevent this sort of thing means this is the first incident you've ever heard of.
Bad enough to put him in the cabin on the wrong flight, but to put him in the cockpit! I know there's a pilot shortage but geez!
Its the fault of the parents. Anyone who thinks that a 6 year old is capable of handling the airline experience is a moron.
No it isn't. Airlines have systems for this, the kid is supposed to be accompanied by staff.
It makes no difference who accompanies them if its not their parent or gaurdian.
Do you also believe daycare should be banned?
Only parents or guardians are ever allowed to look after kids? Just give it up, you sound ridiculous.
I guess you never let you kid out of sight, like at school or daycare?
My son has been flying unaccompanied since he was 6. Once a year, almost every year. It’s fine, I accompanied him to the gate where he is handed off to a flight attendant. It’s not some huge traumatizing experience you’re imagining. He loved it, too, cause there were usually other kids on the plane to play with.
It's your fault for not understanding how the UM system works, which makes you a massive moron.
"Unaccompanied minor" shouldn't even be a thing on a flight. Sounds like a parenting problem to me, rather than a problem with an airline.
Thats a narrow position. It shouldn’t be a thing when there’s a choice in the matter. There are times when there is no choice.
Nah, it's fine. I did it a lot as a kid. Very rarely does a kid end up in the wrong place.