An unfortunate Elena Kerr of Nashville fell victim to every mother’s worst nightmare: not knowing where your child is. On Tuesday Kerr sent her nine-year-old daughter, Chloe, on a Southwest Airlines flight to La Guardia in New York, where she was set to spend the holidays with her aunt.
Kerr had already been aware of the flight’s two stops in “Columbus and Baltimore along the way” in which Chloe was not supposed to get off the flight until it reached New York. Changes in weather, however, forced the airline to make a flight switch.
Being so young and not knowing better, when a Southwest employee led her off the plane and onto another one for the switch she probably didn’t make any protest. The call was not made to Chloe’s mother though, and Kerr found out about Chloe missing when her sister called asking if she was supposed to be arriving late at La Guardia.
Calls were immediately made to the airline, and after an hour Southwest located Chloe and informed her mother. In a statement made by Southwest Airlines spokesperson Brad Hopkins, the company does not have a policy in which an unaccompanied minor’s guardians are supposed to be contacted if a flight is delayed, but they do usually try to make the effort to inform them if there’s a disruption in the flight schedule. Chloe’s case this time around was one of those that slipped by.
After an incident that is reminiscent of the Christmas classic Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Kerr states she is just glad that Chloe is okay and finally in the safety of her aunt’s home in New York. This wasn’t the girl’s first flight, but the experience may have made it her last.
