A Canadian airline accidentally removed a 14-year-old girl from a flight and made her fend for herself for 24 hours after gate agents failed to check whether she was a minor, the girl’s mother has claimed.
Camryn Larkan was due to fly as an unaccompanied child on a Porter Airlines flight to Victoria, British Colombia, on August 30 after visiting her family in Toronto, but she was booted off the plane after she had boarded.
Having already taken her seat, Camryn says that a flight attendant approached her and said that there was an unspecified problem. She was told to collect her belongings and get off the plane but Camryn says she didn’t realise she wouldn’t be let back onboard.
“I was kind of just like really confused … I thought I was coming back to my seat. I thought that they were just going to take my bags,” Camryn told CBC News. “As soon as I got off the plane and I saw that the door had closed, that’s when I started to like get really anxious.”
It was only after the plane had already departed that Camryn learned that due to an weight imbalance, some passengers had to be involuntarily offloaded, including her.
Camryn says she was then told to look after herself without any assistance from the airline or an offer of compensation.
Thankfully, Camryn’s father, who lives in Toronto, was able to collect her from the airport, but her family is still upset that Porter Airlines put Camryn in potential danger.
Porter Airlines, however, says that its staff weren’t aware that Camryn was under the age of 18 and if it had known she was a child then proper safeguarding protocols would have been put in place.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the carrier explained: “Our team asked for volunteers to travel the following day to Victoria. When none came forward, passengers were selected based on their fare type.”
The statement added: “It was not known to our team at the time that Camryn was a minor.”
Like many airlines, Porter offers an unaccompanied minor program which ensures that children are supervised by airline staff and looked after in the event of disruption. The unaccompanied service is mandatory for children aged between 8 and 11, but parents can opt out of the $100 service for children aged between 12 and 16.
In this case, Camryn’s mother says she wasn’t even aware that Porter offered an unaccompanied minor service, so she didn’t end up paying for it.
If Camryn had been registered as an unaccompanied minor then its unlikely that she would have been booted from the flight because it would much more costly and time-consuming to look after Camryn while she waited for the next flight.
Why, however, Porter’s reservation system didn’t flag that Camryn was under the age of 18 is still a mystery.
Even Spirit’s denied boarding tool will tell an agent NO if they try to select someone under 18.
Porter Airlines need to get it together, these clowns did the same nonsense to us and simple left us stranded for 3 days without any explanation, no ground crew nothing, it cost us $2200 to book a flight with WestJet to To. No apology, nothing and 7 months for a refund.
The girl was not accidentally removed, she was INTENTIONALLY removed.
Your child not worth a $100 fee?