WASHINGTON — An unaccompanied child wound up on a Spirit Airlines flight to the wrong city during one of the busiest travel days of the year, the airline confirmed on Sunday.
The child was supposed to be traveling Thursday from Philadelphia to Fort Myers, but was "incorrectly boarded" on a flight to Orlando, a Spirit spokesperson said in a statement shared with multiple media outlets. The two Florida cities are about 160 miles apart.
"The child 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," the airline spokesperson added. An internal investigation is reportedly underway.
WINK News, a local TV outlet in Fort Myers, identified the child as a 6-year-old boy who was taking his first-ever flight to visit his grandmother, Maria Ramos. She told the outlet it was one of the scariest ordeals of her life when the flight landed without her grandson onboard.
“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 described to 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.'”
She told the outlet her grandson then called to say he had landed in Orlando, even though his bag wound up in Fort Myers. Ramos added that Spirit offered to reimburse her for the drive to get her grandson, but all she wants is answers about how he got on the wrong flight.
This isn't the first time an unaccompanied minor has wound up on the wrong flight. In 2019, a 14-year-old North Carolina boy was headed to Sweden but ended up on a plane to Germany. In 2016, two boys traveling alone separately to the United States from the Dominican Republic ended up flying to the wrong cities.