Runaway 7-year-old takes train, boards plane without ticket

Flight passengers at Geneva Airport in Switzerland. File picture: Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP

Flight passengers at Geneva Airport in Switzerland. File picture: Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP

Published Oct 31, 2017

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Geneva - A seven-year-old girl who ran

away from her parents managed to take a train to Geneva airport

and board a plane despite having no ticket.

The girl gave her parents the slip near Geneva's central

railway station on Sunday, then took the one-stop ride to the

airport. Her parents rang the Swiss police, who tracked her

progress through the airport on security videos, airport

spokesman Bertrand Staempfli said.

She went through the security gate and managed to pass

herself off as the child of adults around her, before using her

small stature to slip through the departure gate without being

noticed and boarding a plane, the airport said in a statement.

On her first attempt she followed a crew towards the plane

and was turned back. She melted into the crowd and pretended to

look for her parents. The second time, she managed to get into a

plane, was spotted by an official, stopped, and handed over to

police.

Staempfli declined to say which airline was involved or

where it was flying to, but he said it was leaving from the

airport's French sector and the destination was in France.

Geneva airport straddles the French-Swiss border and

passengers can leave from France or Switzerland.

The airport said in the statement it would tighten safety

rules and boarding procedures as a result of what it called the

"highly regrettable incident".

"This should never have happened," Staempfli said. 

Reuters

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