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Young Girl Traveling Alone Gets Stranded At BWI Temporarily

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A trip to visit family for the holidays almost ended in disaster. A young girl accidentally got lost after flying through BWI Marshall Airport.

Kai Jackson explains the girl's nightmare trip.

Chloe Boyce is nine. Tuesday, her mother and stepfather put her on a Southwest Airlines plane in Nashville. She was heading to LaGuardia Airport in New York to spend Christmas with her aunt. But when the passengers got off the plane, Boyce wasn't on it.

"My sister called me and said, `Were you going to tell me she was going to be late?' and I said, `I don't know what you are talking about. I have no idea what you mean,'" said Elena Kerr.

Frantic, Kerr called the airline. Apparently, no one there knew where she was.

"It was like the scariest moment of my life to think that they didn't know where she was. I'm so happy she's OK; I'm so relieved but yesterday was the worst day of my life," Kerr said.

Southwest says when Boyce got to BWI, a company employee took her off the plane because it was overbooked and planned to book her on another flight. Southwest tracked down Boyce an hour later.

Southwest says it's against their policy to take a child off the plane in the first place. Her family says to make matters worse, nobody called to tell them what had happened.

"Someone took her off the plane anyway, probably because she's a child and she's not going to say, `No, you can't rebook me.' She doesn't know any better," Kerr said.

Southwest Airlines says its unaccompanied minor policy doesn't include contacting guardians when a flight is delayed or re-routed.

This wasn't Boyce's first time flying alone but her parents say it could be her last for some time.

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