A Canadian airline removed a minor from the plane over a weight imbalance issue and took off, leaving her stranded at the airport. The 14-year-old girl was travelling alone for the second time, and her parents are furious and have accused the company of endangering her.
Responding to the matter, the airline said that they were unaware that she was an unaccompanied minor.
Camryn Larkan was on a Porter Airlines flight from Toronto, Canada and was travelling back to Victoria on August 30. She was already seated when the crew asked her to get off the plane.
The girl told CBC that she was confused and thought she would be going back to her seat. But when she saw the doors closing, she started to get anxious. “I was kind of just like really confused … I thought I was coming back to my seat. I thought that they were just going to take my bags,” Camryn told the CBC. “As soon as I got off the plane and I saw that the door had closed, that’s when I started to, like, get really anxious.”
After being removed from the flight, the airline did not come to her assistance and she was left all by herself to figure out what had happened.
Talking about why no one helped her, airline spokesperson Robyn van Teunenbroek told the CBC that Camryn “quickly left the airport and there was limited opportunity for our team to discuss options with her.”
Her mother, Catherine, told CBC, “They put my child in imminent danger. It was completely negligent and it shouldn’t happen to any other minor.”
Her father, who had dropped Larkan at the airport, came to her rescue and picked her up. “I’m just glad that my dad was there because if he wasn’t I would have been alone,” Larkan added.
Porter Airlines pleads innocence, says “we didn’t know”
Van Teunenbroek told the CBC that the airline didn’t know that Larkan was an unaccompanied minor. He said that the team asked people to volunteer to travel to Victoria the next day.
“When none came forward, passengers were selected based on their fare type. It was not known to our team at the time that Camryn was a minor,” he said.
Porter Airlines offers an “unaccompanied minor service” for those between ages 8 to 17 which helps children flying without their parents, a representative told PEOPLE. It is mandatory for passengers ages 8 to 11 and those aged 12-17 can choose it or not and costs $100.
The passenger gets “dedicated supervision by Porter team members and exemption from involuntary deplaning” as part of the service, the representative said. However, in what appeared as an attempt to point fingers at the parents, the person said, “This service is at the discretion of the family to decide whether the passenger is capable of flying independently. In Camryn’s case, the unaccompanied minor service was not purchased.”
Camryn’s mother is livid to learn about the service, saying, the airline is “providing a service saying we know these people are at-risk and they’re saying if you don’t [pay for] the service, you’re treated as any other adult passenger traveling,” she added. “It’s just absolutely ludicrous.”