Photograph: Eder Paisan/Alamy
British Airways lost my 14-year-old daughter in Toulouse airport when she was flying alone to Heathrow, then charged me for a whole new flight departing the next day. My cousin had checked her in, and she was given a boarding pass marked gate 54, where she duly waited. When staff appeared, she presented herself at the desk and was told that her flight was, in fact, departing from gate 52. Gate 52 had closed before she reached it and she had been marked as a “no-show”.
BA knew she was 14. They knew she was physically in the airport. They knew she had been given wrong information about the gate that was 50 metres away and they were too lazy to check on a young girl sitting on her own. She was shouted at by airport staff as she tried to get back through passport control and security, and was in floods of tears. No one offered her any support.
