After the flight, the company told the mother that her daughter was «missing».
A 12-year-old girl who boarded a flight without her parents was lost on American Airlines after the flight. This was reported by Newsweek, citing the story of the child's mother. The woman shared the situation in a video on her page in TikTok, which went viral and gained about two million views.
According to Monica Gilliam, she sent her teenage daughter on a single flight from Chattanooga to Miami on a well-known airline to meet her father. Hoping to properly look after the child, American paid for the service of escorting minors 150 dollars.
But after the plane landed in Miami, confused American Airlines employees contacted the mother and said that her child was "missing." Later it turned out that the schoolgirl, having said goodbye to the crew, left the board unaccompanied. The girl wandered around the airport, having no idea what to do next and where to go. A little later, she was able to contact her father via FaceTime and then left the terminal.
Gilliam trusted the airline with her daughter because she was confident that its employees would escort the child to the correct exit from the airport, as they should.
"I'm not going to fly on American Airlines again, what they did is inexcusable," the mother said.
American Airlines promised an internal investigation into what happened.