11-Year-Old Kid Flies Solo to Rome With No Ticket or Documentations

11-Year-Old Kid Flies Solo to Rome With No Ticket or Documentations

Authorities are now investigating how a solo 11-year-old kid was able to board a plane from Manchester, U.K., and arrived in Rome, Italy, with no money or documentation.

The Jet2.com, a low-cost U.K. airline that flies to 53 destinations in Eastern and Western Europe, had a scheduled flight departed from the Manchester airport Tuesday with the boy onboard. He went through five security checkpoints undetected. Despite having no boarding pass at security, no boarding pass at the gate, no passport and no boarding pass stub once on the plane, airport workers failed to notice the boy was on his own. Even a headcount onboard the flight failed to detect the child.

Staffers have been suspended, pending an investigation. Newspapers report the boy ran away from his mother on Tuesday while she was shopping close to the airport. He apparently made his way to the airport on foot.

Once there, he followed another family through the checkpoints and onto the plane. On the way to Italy, passengers alerted airline crew to the boy. The captain then notified police at Manchester airport, who alerted the boy's mother that he had been found. The boy's mother had reported him missing.

The boy stayed onboard the aircraft once it landed in Rome, according to the newspaper. The other passengers deplaned while the boy was questioned. He remained on the flight, which returned to Manchester, where he was reunited with his mother.

John Greenway, a spokesman for Manchester airport, told the newspaper: "We know that people are not very happy about it. The investigation will look at how this has happened. Jet2 will be looking at how this boy got on that aircraft.  He's evaded checks. He did go through the metal detector and didn't sound any alarms. He wasn't a danger to any of the passengers."

The breech shines a light on potential cracks in security as the 2012 Olympics in London kicks off later this week.

Earlier this month, Britain's The Observer published a report quoting border officials as saying known terror suspects had slipped through airport security at London's Heathrow international airport.

Posted by Sophia Andrews on Sunday July 29 2012, 5:14 AM EST. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Travel. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0