A teary-eyed father is grateful to Air Canada for taking good care of his 23-month-old son who was accidentally left behind in Vanouver while the parents flew on to Winnipeg.
The family, moving to Winnipeg from the Philippines, had become separated at Vancouver International Airport on Monday and were seated in different parts of the plane.
Jun Parreno, holding his 23-month-old son J.M., is met by his sister-in-law, centre, and some other unidentified friends at the Richardson International Airport.
Each thought the other had the child, father Jun Parreno said Monday evening when he landed back in Winnipeg with his son J.M. in his arms.
Air Canada flew the child's father for free from Winnipeg back to Vancouver, and back again to Winnipeg.
"Air Canada took care of him," said Parreno, "I'm grateful."
The dad had tears in his eyes when he arrived back in Winnipeg shortly before 8 p.m. to be greeted by in-laws at the gate.
Parreno is an IT specialist who worked for the Nokia Siemen's Network in the Philippines.
"This is my first day in Canada," the dad said, exhausted by the ordeal and vastly relieved.
Three women greeted the dad and son in Winnipeg and one of them said the episode was incredible.
"I'm relieved everything is OK. But I'm shocked. I work for a travel agency. This is their first time they've come to Canada," said the woman who identified herself as the child's aunt, gesturing at her brother-in-law.
"The agent should have double-checked the passengers," the woman said.
Parreno said he doesn't blame anyone.
He said the family cleared customs with no problem but their three bags were overweight and security staff had the family unpack all their belongings and repack them again before the Winnipeg flight.
That left little time to catch the connecting flight. The boarding call had already been made by the time the family got their luggage repacked to the satisfaction of airline staff, the dad said.
It was at that point the family became separated.
The dad stayed behind with the luggage and the rest of the family ran for the Winnipeg flight.
"We had 10 minutes before boarding. We were running for the gate," the dad said. Each assumed the other had the toddler.
Parreno said he was seated several minutes after, in the front of the aircraft.
He assumed all his family were in their seats at the back.
Before takeoff a flight attendant asked Parreno how many people were in his party and he told her "six." The attendant went to the back of the plane to talk with his wife, Parreno said.
The flight took off and at that point, the dad said he assumed all was well.
"I was confident our son was with my wife," he said.
Meanwhile sometime later on the ground, a security guard found J.M., who speaks no English, wandering between the security clearance area and the departure gate early Monday morning.
"We were called by (security) who told us one of the security people had a toddler in tow," Air Canada spokeswoman Angela Mah said. "He doesn't speak English so we found a Tagalog-speaking agent who (looked) after him."
Mah said because the boy was so young, he didn't have a boarding pass because he would be seated on someone's lap.
And "because there was no boarding card issued for him we wouldn't have known that there was a passenger missing from a flight," she said.
Air Canada staff had no idea what had happened, but began checking flights that had left Vancouver to discover which one may have held the boy's parents. There had been no panic calls about a missing child from anyone on board any of the morning's flights.
"We eventually determined who his parents might be -- they would be from the Philippines -- and the flight crew talked to them," Mah said. "They didn't realize until then that the baby had been left behind."
The parents were put into telephone contact with J.M. and when the flight landed in Winnipeg, the child's father was put aboard another Air Canada flight to Vancouver to retrieve the child.
The baby was kept in Air Canada's offices at the airport and staff found him some toys.
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
-- with files from Canwest News Service
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