Florida mom criticizes Frontier Airlines

Her kids, ages 7 and 9, stayed overnight in Atlanta after flight diversion

A Florida mom says Denver-based Frontier Airlines failed to contact her after a flight her two young children were on last month was diverted to Atlanta, resulting in the kids spending the night in a hotel under the supervision of a Frontier employee.

Carter Gray, 9, and his sister Etta, 7, were flying unaccompanied on an Orlando, Fla.-bound flight on the evening of July 22 when bad weather caused the plane to be diverted, according to reporting by the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The diversion set the kids’ mom, Jennifer Ignash, into a panic as she waited at the gate in Orlando. She said she called Frontier customer service but officials could not provide her with information on her kids’ whereabouts. Another unaccompanied child on the flight lent the children a cellphone which they used to contact her that night, she said.

“Without that child, we would have had zero idea where our kids were,” Ignash told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, adding she wasn’t contacted by Frontier until the next morning.

In the interim, Carter and Etta were taken to an Atlanta-area hotel in a Frontier staffer’s personal vehicle. They stayed the night in a group of rooms with six other unaccompanied kids from the flight, according to media reports. Ignash and the children’s father, Chad Gray, said they were never told who drove their kids to the hotel or who stayed there with them.

“We never gave approval for that to happen,” Gray told the Atlanta paper.

Frontier officials on Thursday defended the way the airline handled the situation. The kids were watched by a supervisor at all times and were fed, according to a Frontier statement. Providing a hotel room is standard procedure in such instances, and the supervisor who watched the kids spoke to their father before their flight home, an airline spokesman said. Frontier said it was not made aware of the parents’ concerns until media outlets began reporting them.

“Our records show that the children were in contact with their mother before being transported to the hotel and with their father the following morning before leaving on the continued flight,” Frontier’s statement said.

The ultra-low-cost carrier’s website said there is a $110 fee attached to the ticket of any child between the ages of 5 and 14 that flies unaccompanied on one of its flights. The fee applies in both directions on roundtrip flights.

United Airlines, which operates a hub at Denver International Airport, has a policy of contacting the parents or guardians of unaccompanied kids “as soon as we can” in the event a flight is re-routed on its way to its destination, company spokesman Charles Hobart said.

Ignash took to her Facebook page on Wednesday to share an Atlanta TV station’s story about the situation and raise awareness about what happened.

“Calling all parents ... should you decide to have your children fly as unaccompanied minors, please be aware of the airline’s policy, procedures and communication should the flight get diverted,” she wrote.