Every parent's worst nightmare is getting a phone call that your kid has suddenly gone missing. That is exactly what happened to Georgia mom Monica Gilliam, who shared her anger and frustrations with American Airlines in a phone interview Fox News Digital.
The 39-year-old said she had that scary experience about a week ago after dropping off her 12-year-old daughter at an American Airlines gate inside Chattanooga Airport. Gilliam said her child was flying solo down to Miami, Florida from the Chattanooga airport in Tennessee for a three-week visit with her dad.
According to Gilliam, she paid $150 dollars extra, in addition to the ticket price, to make sure her kid would be escorted directly to her waiting father once the plane landed in Miami, under the "unaccompanied minors" program of American Airlines.
Gilliam's rant goes viral on TikTok
Gilliam, who is a mom of four and professional photographer from Chicamauga, Georgia, posted a video on social media platform TikTok last Saturday, detailing what happened next. She said that almost an hour after her daughter's flight landed, she got a call from an American Airlines manager in Miami, who said that her child is missing and that they have shut down the terminal but they don't know where she is.
Gilliam's video quickly went viral on TikTok, amassing more than 1.8 million views. She said that the trip began smoothly enough for her daughter. Her child was scheduled to depart on a 6 a.m. flight from Chatanooga, so they arrived early at the airport to check the girl in as an unaccompanied minor with the airline.
She said that they gave her a lanyard for her child to wear around her neck and it has got all of the kid's information inside it. That includes her boarding pass, which lets everybody know that her child is not traveling with an adult.
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Airline loses track of unaccompanied minor
After having breakfast at the airport, her daughter was taken by a flight attendant to the aircraft and got her boarded first. Gilliam said that is what they are supposed to do with an unaccompanied minor.
She said she stayed until the plane took off. Gilliam left the airport not thinking that anything was going to go wrong with her child. Unfortunately for her, that was not the case at all. Gilliam said she received a call from her ex-husband two hours later. She knew something was amiss when he told her that she was not going to believe what happened.
According to Gilliam, the flight attendants just waved at her daughter once she deplaned instead of keeping her there as she has an unaccompanied minor lanyard around her neck. American Airlines' guidelines posted on its website say that unaccompanied minor service is mandatory for kids ages 5 to 14 who are traveling alone, as is a guardian contact and a mandatory gate escort.
Gilliam shared that her daughter did not know what to do after leaving the plane so she kept on walking. She added that her child was trying to get ahold of her father through her cell phone. Her ex-husband was in line for his gate pass when he got a text from their kid. He said that he is just going to stand still and if she is comfortable reading the signs, he is going to try to get his daughter to him as quickly as possible.
That is what the father and daughter did and to Gilliam's relief, she did make it to him, confirming that her child made it safely to her dad at the Miami airport.
