Harried family forgets tot in Vancouver airport
Air Canada staff took care of boy while father flew back from Winnipeg

The Associated Press
updated 7:54 a.m. PT, Wed., May. 14, 2008

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - An immigrant family left a 23-month-old boy in the Vancouver airport and learned he was missing only when contacted during the next leg of the trip.
Jun Parreno, the boy's father, told The Vancouver Sun the mix-up occurred Monday as he, his wife and two grandparents of the child, J.M., were scrambling between their arrival in Canada and a connecting flight to Winnipeg on Air Canada.

Running late after having to unpack and repack all their luggage, "we had 10 minutes before boarding," said Parreno, who was emigrating with his family from the Philippines. "We were running for the gate."

He said he thought his son was with the three other adults, who were running to the gate ahead of him, and they thought the little boy was with him.

Instead, in a scenario similar to the movie "Home Alone," the toddler was wandering alone between a security checkpoint and the flight gates, said Angela Mah, an Air Canada representative.
"We were called by (security) who told us one of the security people had a toddler in tow," Mah said. "He doesn't speak English, so we found a Tagalog-speaking agent who has been looking after him."

There was no boarding pass for the youngster because he did not have a separately assigned seat, so there was no indication in the airline's computer system that someone had missed a flight, nor had there been any panicked calls from anyone on a flight missing a child, Mah said.

That's because the family was scattered in different parts of the plane to Winnipeg and still didn't know the child had been left.

Air Canada staff began checking flights that had left, and "we eventually determined who his parents might be ... and the flight crew talked to them," Mah said. "They didn't realize until then that the baby had been left behind.

"We're not aware of this ever happening on an Air Canada flight before."

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, she said.

Parreno had tears in his eyes when he returned to Winnipeg holding his son.

"I am relieved everything is OK ... but I was shocked," he said. "The staff at Air Canada took good care of him."

This is not a terrible surprise for anyone who has flown lately with the obscene security procedures and short times between connecting flights. It's not good and I'm not saying it should have happened, I'm just not surprised.

Air travel is quickly becoming a tremendously inconvenient way to travel. I spend hours of my life just sitting because of all the fucking regulations for check-in / departure times.

Curiously, just last week, I had my cigarette lighter confiscated from my checked baggage going from Detroit to Las Vegas. On the way back from Las Vegas, I kept my new lighter in my carry-on baggage and it made it back to Detroit. With inconsistencies like that, what are we bothering with airport security for?

I was talking to my wife about this yesterday. What a gong show. Yes, the security's a joke, but that still doesn't take away from the exceptionally poor parenting skillz on display here.

"My family's in Winnipeg...I'm in Vancouver??" [/McCauley]

I'm merely pointing out that an ESL family (who knows what capacity they have for communicating in English or French) could easily get caught up in the stress of trying to navigate an airport in 10 minutes to catch a connector. It's not like the airlines are trying to make flying a simpler, less stressful experience. Imagine going through all that shit in a foreign language and not understanding anything...

Obviously, I'm not trying to make the parents out to be innocent here but I think anyone can concede that this case has some extenuating circumstances. I know I've had to run though terminals with blatant disregard for everyone around me to catch a connector. It's just a bad model for mass transit. Cars and roadways have evolved since the 60's to become more efficient, why has nothing been done to airlines and planes themselves? Maybe air travel should have never been private industry?