It was like something out of a Home Alone sequel.
An Icelandic mother was apoplectic after her teenage son was stranded abroad by Wizz Air after the budget airline allegedly overbooked his flights.
“I’m so lost for words,” the distraught parent, called Arna, 39, wrote on Reddit after it exploded online.
Her 14-year-old son, Alfred, was reportedly traveling home to Reykjavík from Rome, Italy with seven other teenagers and an adult companion after a ride on the fence, the Mirror reported.
However, when the group checked in at the airport, Alfred was informed that the carrier did not have a seat for him even though he had a ticket and his mother paid an additional $45 for check-in.
“Due to a problem with online check-in, he had to go to the check-in desk and pay extra to check-in there. He wasn’t assigned a seat,” Arna explained on Reddit. “After boarding, he was told he crashed due to overbooking.”
As a result, the distraught young man had to watch helplessly as his friends left on the Wizz Air flight without him.
While the accompanying adult was offered the option to give up her seat for her, she declined as it would mean leaving the entire group of minors unattended on the plane.
“Hey [Alfred] he was upset by the situation,” Arna told Mirror. “He was really, really scared, I think. I think it just felt very, very disturbing and scary for him.”
To make matters worse, Wizz Air staff said the next flight to Iceland wasn’t for another week.
“They offered no help to get him on another flight the same day and didn’t understand how serious the situation was, to leave a 14-year-old alone stranded in a foreign country,” the distraught mother wrote on Reddit.
She added that staff said they did not know how old Alfred was, despite the fact that his age was listed on the booking.
The petrified teenager went to the Wizz Air service desk because staff had told him he was entitled to compensation.
When he got there, he was told he wasn’t entitled to anything.
The Post contacted Wizz Air for comment.
The only consolation was that a friendly couple had also bumped off the same flight and offered to look after the stranded teenager.
“Fortunately there was a crashed couple from the same flight who offered to take care of him,” Arna recalls. “Otherwise, I’m not sure what I would have done.”
“I probably would have flown on the first available flight or contacted the Italian police.”
The air odyssey finally came to an end after the determined parent booked Alfred a “really expensive flight” home with the couple via Icelandic Air, which she described as “really helpful”.
The accompanying couple reportedly helped her son “retrieve his luggage” – something Wizz Air had neglected, according to Arna.
Despite making a formal complaint, the beleaguered mother says the airline has yet to respond, claiming: “There is no way to deal with them.”
#Boy #stranded #foreign #country #booking #plane #flight #week #Scary
Image Source : nypost.com