Spirit Airlines' Mishap With Child Sparks 'Home Alone' Comparisons

An incident in which Spirit Airlines put an unaccompanied child on the wrong flight has sparked online comparisons to the Home Alone film series.

Spirit Airlines, noted as a budget-friendly travel option and often the butt of jokes about shoddy service, issued an apology on Saturday after a Thursday incident in which an unaccompanied 6-year-old boy, traveling by plane for the first time to visit his grandmother, was sent to the wrong destination. The child was supposed to have flown from Philadelphia International Airport to Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, but was instead boarded onto a plane bound for Orlando amid a potentially record-breaking holiday travel surge.

In its statement, Spirit Airlines stressed that the child had been attended to by staff the entire time, even if he was regrettably sent roughly 160 miles northwest of his intended destination.

"On Dec. 21, an unaccompanied child traveling from Philadelphia (PHL) to Fort Myers (RSW) was incorrectly boarded on a flight to Orlando (MCO)," Spirit Airlines said in a statement provided to Newsweek on Sunday. "The child was always under the care and supervision of a Spirit Team Member, and as soon as we discovered the error, we took immediate steps to communicate with the family and reconnect them. We take the safety and responsibility of transporting all of our Guests seriously and are conducting an internal investigation. We apologize to the family for this experience."

As news of the incident spread online, many on social media made comparisons between the boy's predicament and the Home Alone series. Released in the early 1990s and featuring then-child star Macaulay Culkin, the hit Christmas films center around a young boy named Kevin McCallister (Culkin) whose large family forgets him at home or misplaces him during the hectic holiday travel season.

The comparisons were specifically made to the second film, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, in which McCallister ends up on the wrong plane and is left to his own devices in New York City at Christmastime.

"'Home Alone 2 could never happen in 2023.' My friend have you considered: Spirit Airlines," one social media user going only by "Matt" posted to X, the platform previously known as Twitter.

"The plot of Home Alone 2: Lost In New York was only missing one thing to become fully plausible: Spirit Airlines," X user going by "The Fact of Other Minds" wrote in their own post.

"Scholars: Home Alone 2 could never happen in modern society. Airports and airlines have too many checks in place," user Cody Williams wrote, following up with adding the popular "Monkey Puppet" meme.