Children flying alone pose a challenge to airline staff as they require extra attention more than adult travelers.

A 6-year-old visiting his grandmother in Fort Myers, Florida took a Spirit Airlines flight from Philadelphia on 21 December. At the airport, a gate agent escorted the boy to the plane.

Maria Ramos later went to the Fort Myers airport to fetch her grandson, but he was not on the plane. Instead, the boy had landed in Orlando, 254 kilometers away.

The child was apparently escorted to the wrong plane, and Ramos had to drive to Orlando to pick him up.

The Spirit Airlines gate agent at fault ended up jobless after he was fired over the fiasco.

A Florida teen, meanwhile, was flying from Tampa to Cleveland, Ohio to visit his mother on 22 December.

Logan Lose, 16, was taking his first solo flight, and his father had given him prior instructions. At the Tampa airport, Lose went to the Frontier Airlines counter as passengers were boarding at around 8 p.m. The attendant glanced at Lose's ticket and allowed him to board.

The boy informed his mom in Cleveland that he had boarded his flight, and the latter called her ex-husband in Tampa to tell him. The dad was surprised by his son's early flight and, upon checking the departure schedule online, realized he had boarded the wrong plane, CNN reported.

The elder Lose tried calling Logan's phone, but it was in voicemail mode, so he contacted the airline to inform them that his son was on board the wrong plane. The plane's pilot was contacted and apprised of the situation.

When Logan's flight landed in Puerto Rico, he was kept on the plane and flown back to Tampa. The following day, he was placed on a new flight to Cleveland, CNN reported.

"This whole ordeal has been stressful for everyone," Lose's father told CNN. "If they had scanned his boarding pass, they would've known my son was on the wrong plane."