Two different airlines had massive internal errors over the holidays, which led to two unaccompanied minors boarding and flying on incorrect flights.
Logan Lose, 16, was set to depart from Tampa International Airport on a Frontier Airlines flight on December 22 to go to Cleveland, Ohio, to visit his mother—but instead ended up in Puerto Rico.
The gate agent reportedly checked Lose’s pass but didn’t scan it before he boarded the flight. The flight that he was supposed to be on was leaving from the same gate but boarding after the flight to Puerto Rico took off.
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“I could feel the fear in the text messages. I could feel how scared he was,” the teen’s father, Ryan Lose, told NBC News about his son’s frantic realization that he had landed in the wrong destination. “My heart pretty much sank at that point because there was nothing I could do.”
Lose said that the family called the airline after the flight had taken off to let them know what was going on and the pilot was informed so that he could find Logan when the plane landed.
Logan was flown back to Tampa immediately, at 3:30 a.m., on December 23 and was on a 7:45 a.m. flight to Cleveland later that morning.
“This whole ordeal has been stressful for everyone,” Lose told CNN.
Ironically, Lose’s incident was not the first-of-its-kind this holiday season.
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On December 21, a 6-year-old flying Spirit Airlines from Philadelphia was accidentally put on a flight to Orlando, Florida, when he was meant to fly to Fort Myers (which is a few hours away) to visit his grandmother for the holidays.
“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,” Spirit said in a statement to CNN.
The child’s grandmother, Maria Ramos, told local outlet WINK-TV that it was not made clear how her grandson was incorrectly boarded onto the wrong plane and explained that she had to drive 160 miles to go pick him up from the airport, which Spirit offered to reimburse.
“We apologize to the family for this experience,” the airline said.
