A 39-year-old mother slammed American Airlines after her 12-year-old daughter disappeared during a solo trip from Tennessee to Miami.
Monica Gilliam took to TikTok and spoke about the ordeal and her post has quickly gone viral, gaining over 19,000 comments and more than 157,000 views.
In the clip, the mother said: “It’s not OK and it shouldn’t happen.”
Gilliam said that she paid $150 for a chaperone for her 12-year-old daughter who was flying solo from Chattanooga Airport to see her dad in Florida, Fox News reported.
Her daughter was wearing a lanyard that shows her name and flight information so it would be easy to identify her and her guardian.
Airline personnel or flight attendants were supposed to escort the girl from the airplane to their guardian or parent waiting at the airport, ensuring their identity before letting the child go.
But Gilliam said in her post that her daughter did not receive that service.
“Almost an hour after her flight landed, I got a call from American Airlines,” she said in the viral clip. “It was the American Airlines manager at Miami and he says ‘your child is missing, we’ve shut down the terminal, we don’t know where she is.”
The furious mother said that her daughter’s flight had landed early and flight attendants simply waved her off.
“It turns out that the flight attendants waved her off the plane and said ‘bye’ and she didn’t know what to do so she kept going because they were telling her ‘bye’ so she kept walking,” she said.
“So she’s going through the airport with that billboard on her, that she was an unaccompanied minor in one of the largest human trafficking hubs in the country,” Gilliam expressed.
Fortunately, the girl managed to get in touch with her father, who talked her through the airport until they finally saw each other.
“On the way out, no American Airlines employees stopped her to see if she had an adult, not one Miami airport employee stopped her and even the TSA security agent-before she left the secure area into baggage claim-stopped her.”
@relativelymonica The utter failure by @American Airlines ,#tsa and #mia ♬ original sound – relativelymonica
American Airlines said that they are investigating the incident.
The company said in a statement: “American 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. A member of our team has reached out to the customer to learn more about their experience.”
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