Unaccompanied boy, 6, put on wrong flight

A six-year-old boy found himself on the wrong flight, after he was "incorrectly boarded" by Spirit Airlines staff.

Casper was travelling from Philadelphia to meet his grandmother in Fort Myers, Florida.

But he ended up in Orlando - a four-hour drive away - after he was mistakenly placed on the wrong plane.

Spirit Airlines apologised and offered to reimburse his grandmother for the drive to pick Casper up, but Maria Ramos wants to know why this happened.

Casper was travelling from Philadelphia International Airport to Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers on Thursday, to meet his grandmother.

But he was put on a plane to Orlando, in a scene reminiscent from the film Home Alone 2, when Kevin is put on a wrong flight - leaving him stranded hundreds of kilometres away from his family.

After the plane he was supposed to be on landed and her grandson wasn't on it, panic set in for Ms Ramos.

"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?' Ms Ramos told WINK-TV, a television station in Fort Myers.

She said the flight attendant told her: "No, I had no kids with me."

Fortunately, the quick-thinking child phoned his grandmother soon after he landed in Orlando. Ms Ramos drove from Fort Myers to pick up her grandson.

"I want them to call me [and] let me know how my grandson ended up in Orlando," Ms Ramos said.

"How did that happen? Did they get him off the plane? He jumped in the wrong plane by himself?"

Spirit Airlines has apologised and said in a statement: "We take the safety and responsibility of transporting all of our guests seriously and are conducting an internal investigation. We apologize to the family for this experience."

Such mishaps are uncommon, but unaccompanied minors as well as other passengers have travelled on wrong flights in the past.

In 2009, two different unaccompanied girls were placed on wrong Continental Express flights. The airline blamed 'miscommunication among staff."

And in 2019, a boy was put on a United Airlines flight to Germany when he was supposed to be headed to Sweden.