6-year-old boy placed on the wrong flight ends up in Orlando

A 6-year-old boy named Casper was on his way to visit his grandmother when Spirit Airlines put him on the wrong flight, People reports.

The unaccompanied little boy was supposed to travel from Philadelphia International Airport to Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers but ended up arriving in Orlando, which is about an hour away.

The little boy’s grandmother, Maria Ramos, says she arrived at the Fort Myers airport to pick up her grandson Casper. Although she wasn’t able to find him, she did manage to find his luggage.

Ramos spoke to a CBS news affiliate outlet, WINK-TV, and said, “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,’ 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.’”

It wasn’t too long after that interaction when Ramos says Casper called her himself and told her where he was. Ramos says she’s waiting on answers to find out how her grandson’s first trip on an airplane turned into such a scary debacle.

“I want them to call me,” she says about Spirit Airlines. “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?”

Every airline has their own rules for unaccompanied minors but boarding the correct flight is a universal law of airport travel, no matter what airline you’re flying, how young you are or anything else so, it’s a little confounding that a childcould be checked into the correct flight but then boarded onto the wrong one. I can’t even imagine the horror or the rush of scary thoughts his grandmother probably felt when she found her grandson’s luggage but not her grandson.

Spirit Airlines issued the following statement, “On Dec. 21, an unaccompanied child traveling from Philadelphia (PHL) to Fort Myers (RSW) was incorrectly boarded on a flight to Orlando (MCO). 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.”

They also added that they would be conducting an internal investigation.