FORT MYERS, Fla. — Spirit Airlines is under fire and an internal investigation is underway after a 6-year-old boy was put on the wrong plane and ended up 160 miles away.
The boy, named Casper, was supposed to be on a flight from Philadelphia to southwest Florida to visit his grandmother for the Christmas holiday but instead, he ended up on the wrong flight which put him hundreds of miles away in Orlando, Florida.
When the grandmother, Maria Ramos, went to the Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers on Thursday to pick up her grandson, but he wasn’t there. Initially, the airline told her Casper missed his flight — but that wasn’t possible because she had 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,'” Ramos told WINK News.
She then got a call from her grandson from the airport in Orlando, telling her that he had landed.
In a statement, Spirit Airlines said the boy was under the care and supervision of an airlines employee the entire time, even though he was incorrectly boarded on a flight to Orlando. Once the mistake was discovered, the airlines let the family know, the statement said.
“We take the safety and responsibility of transporting all of our Guests seriously and are conducting an internal investigation,” the statement said. “We apologize to the family for this experience.”
Ramos was reimbursed for having to travel to Orlando.
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