As mom and dad readied for takeoff, their child was left behind.
An unnamed couple allegedly abandoned their 10-year-old son at an airport in Spain after discovering they hadn’t packed all of his travel documents.
Rather than delay their flight, the parents reportedly boarded the plane, leaving their son in the terminal, where a family member would eventually come to pick him up.
A social media whistleblower slammed the parents for allegedly leaving their 10-year-old son at the airport while they boarded a flight.
“[The kid] told [police] that his parents were on the plane, heading to their home country for vacation,” said Lilian, who claims to be an air-operations coordinator at the airport where the incident occurred.
She shared the story with more than 320,000 TikTok viewers, though her claims have not yet been independently verified.
“The explanation given to [authorities] was that the child was traveling with an expired Spanish passport and needed a visa,” Lilian said in Spanish during the clip. “Since he didn’t have the proper visa, they left him in the terminal and called a relative to pick him up.”
“I didn’t see it as normal,” she added. “The police didn’t see it as normal either.”
Lilian, who says she works at the airport, described the boy’s abandonment as one of the most “surreal” experiences she’s witnessed on the job.
While airlines often allow children to fly alone, leaving an unaccompanied minor stranded in an airport is far outside the norm for most people.
Accidents, however, do happen.
In 2018, a couple in Germany accidentally left their 5-year-old daughter at Stuttgart Airport, each assuming the other had taken responsibility for her.
More recently, in late May, a 2-year-old at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey wandered away from his mother and ended up on a luggage conveyor belt.
Lilian claims the boy’s parents didn’t have the proper travel documents for him but were unwilling to miss their flight home for vacation.
A mother herself, with a grown daughter, Lilian called the abandonment of the 10-year-old “the most surreal” situation she’s ever encountered as an airport employee.
“Hallucinating?” she asked of the parents.
“I’m an air traffic controller, and I’ve seen a lot over the years, but this… this is completely surreal,” she groaned. “I can’t imagine how anyone could leave their 10-year-old son in the terminal just because of documentation issues.”
She didn’t hold back in criticizing the parents for endangering their child.
“They call a relative who might take half an hour, an hour, or even three hours to arrive—and calmly board the flight, leaving the child behind,” she said. “As a mother, I’d freak out.”
According to Lilian, airport police eventually removed the parents’ luggage from the flight and took them to the on-site police station for questioning. It remains unclear whether the boy’s parents were arrested.
