MIAMI – A Georgia mother is frustrated after her 12-year-old daughter was allowed to de-plane an American Airlines flight to Miami without an airline escort.
It took nearly an hour for the child to find her father.
That mother’s video on Tik Tok has gone viral.
It was last Saturday when Monica Gillum’s daughter was flying alone to Miami to be picked up by her father at the airport.
“They put her on the plane first, which is what they’re supposed to do,” Gillum said.
There is a special unaccompanied minor service that airlines offer.
According to American Airlines’ website, gate agents board children first, and after the flight, a team member escorts them off the plane to the gate, where a guardian picks them up.
But Gilliam says that did not happen. She says airline employees just waved her daughter goodbye.
“The next phone call I got was probably 35-40 minutes later,” Gillum said. “It was her dad telling me, ‘You’re not gonna believe what happened. Nobody walked her to me, I had get her to the gate myself.’”
She says her daughter was FaceTiming with her father, navigating alone through a busy Miami International Airport before finally meeting up with him nearly an hour later,
In a statement sent to Local 10 News, American Airlines says it “cares deeply about our young passengers and is committed to providing a safe and pleasant travel experience for them. We take these matters very seriously and are looking into what occurred.”