Another toddler abandoned by family at airport
A 23-month old boy was accidentally abandoned by his family at the Vancouver airport — the latest in a string of mishaps involving toddlers at the airport. The child was traveling with his father, mother and two grandparents.
The family members, who had just immigrated to Canada from the Phillipines, were scrambling in a mad dash for their connecting flight on Monday to Winnipeg on Air Canada. The boy’s father, Jun Parreno said that they were running late and had to unpack and repack their luggage, “We had 10 minutes before boarding and we were running for the gate.”
Apparently, the mixup that caused the separation of child from family occurred when in the mad dash for the gate, the boy’s father thought his son was with the three other adults, who were running to the gate ahead of him. They, in turn, thought the little boy was with his father.
Turns out, the little guy was wandering alone between a security checkpoint and the flight gates. Security was called but had trouble finding the family because the child had no boarding pass — he did not have a separately assigned seat — so there was no indication in the airline’s computer system that anyone on a flight was missing a child.
The family was scattered in different parts of the plane.
Air Canada staff eventually determined who his parents might be and after the flight crew found and talked to the family, they then realized that the baby had been left behind. The parents were put into telephone contact with the little boy, and Parreno was put on another Air Canada plane to return to Vancouver to get him after the family’s flight arrived in Winnipeg with the airline covering the cost of the two additional flights.
Thankfully, while this incident was an accident, there have been cases of children left behind that were not accidental. Airports can be very dangerous places for little ones.
In this particular case, I suppose all is well that ends well. Lesson learned: never assume that your children are safe, know that they are.
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Oh for goodness sake!