Young Caspar Read was traveling from London to Toulouse to visit his grandparents. At least…until he was involuntarily bumped from the flight and left alone at the gate.

Sorry bud, we need your seat

EasyJet, a British low cost carrier, had overbooked Read’s flight, and rather than pick an adult passenger, they somehow settled on bumping him so that another passenger could be accommodated. Read was already boarded and settled in his window seat at this point!

Caspar was then left at the gate alone while his flight took off without him. He had to text his mom to ask her to come back and fetch him. With no money for transportation, he would have been stranded.

Um…minors shouldn’t be the first to be bumped

Undoubtedly, an airline should accommodate unaccompanied minors over adult passengers. If this isn’t policy for airlines across the board, it really should be. While bumping an older teen from a flight is not entirely unreasonable since they should be at least semi-responsible, there is no way they should simply be left at the gate to fend for themselves!

In the case of a younger child, this could be disastrous. There are enough things for a parent to worry about if they send their kid on a flight alone. This brings to mind the situation where JetBlue sent two unaccompanied boys traveling separately from the Dominican Republic to their wrong parents.

EasyJet repsonds

The airline *did* acknowledge that they have policies in place to protect unaccompanied minors. They also went as far as to say that these policies were not followed in Caspar Read’s case, and that the situation will be investigated. This is encouraging, but it is still unnerving that this happened in the first place.