CNN — A Florida teenager traveling alone was meant to fly to his mother in Ohio on a Frontier Airlines flight, but instead ended up on a flight to Puerto Rico.
The 16-year-old passenger was scheduled to fly from Tampa to Cleveland on Dec. 22, but “mistakenly boarded a different flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico,” Frontier Director of Corporate Communications Jennifer de la Cruz said in a statement to CNN.
The Ohio and Puerto Rico flights departed from the same gate, with the flight to Puerto Rico taking off first, according to de la Cruz.
“Frontier has extended its sincere apologies to the family for the error,” de la Cruz said.
It was the first solo flight for the teenager, Logan, who suffers from flight anxiety, the teen’s father Ryan Lose told CNN in a phone interview Saturday.
“This whole ordeal has been stressful for everyone.” – Father of teen who boarded the wrong flight.
The father said he and his current wife, Krista, talked the teen through how to go to the gate.
But when Logan got to the gate in Tampa at around 8 p.m., passengers were already boarding, Lose said. [Based on a review of scheduled departure times, it appears that the teen arrived at his gate two hours early. – HH]
“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.
CNN reached out to Frontier about Lose’s assertion Saturday night but has not yet received a response.
Lose said they realized something was amiss when Logan’s mother called around 8:30 p.m. to let him know their son had boarded, and they realized he got on a plane too early.
“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.
Lose told CNN they tried calling Logan to warn him he was on the wrong plane, but his phone went straight to voicemail.
Lose said they contacted Frontier Airlines around 8:40 p.m. to let them know what was happening and his son was on the wrong flight.
The father said around 10:15 p.m., Frontier called and informed him Logan was indeed on the flight to Puerto Rico and they would let the pilot know to keep an eye out for him …
HEADLINE HEALTH:
QUESTIONS WE HAVE –
- How does anyone get on an airplane without having their boarding pass scanned?
- What kind of parent puts a child ‘who suffers from flight anxiety’ on a plane unaccompanied?
- Do the gate employees of this airline have an IQ greater than that of a potted plant? Because neither the mistakes of the minor passenger or of his family – as serious as they were – excuse the airline’s incompetence.
TIPS WE HAVE –
- Teach children self-reliance. The internet offer scores of resources to help children navigate airports.
- Instruct children to check in with their family. This family says they could not reach their son because their calls to him went to voicemail. If this boy with known ‘flight anxiety’ had been instructed to call his family at each step of his journey, this problem could have been avoided.
- Airlines need to recheck the boarding passes of unaccompanied minors after boarding and before closing the door. Simple, simple, simple.
