In the summer of 2008, amid the rush and confusion of boarding a flight to Paris, nobody noticed that a 4½-year-old girl had never made it onto the plane. Only about 40 minutes after takeoff did her parents find out she was not with them, while she wandered alone through the duty-free area at Ben Gurion Airport asking, “Where are Mom and Dad?”
The family had arrived late at the gate for a Sun D’Or flight to Paris. They were traveling with no fewer than 18 suitcases and, according to the airline, had said they were leaving Israel. Amid the luggage and the rush toward the jet bridge, the parents and four of their children boarded the plane without realizing that their youngest daughter had been left behind.
Parents flew to Paris, daughter left behind at Ben Gurion Airport
(Photo: Bjoern Wylezich / Shutterstock)
The mistake was not immediately noticed at the gate either. The parents handed over seven boarding passes, but only six passengers actually entered the jet bridge. Nobody stopped the family, and nobody noticed that the fifth child was missing. Minutes later, the aircraft doors closed and the flight departed for Paris.
By then, the girl was alone near the fountain in the center of the airport’s duty-free area. Passengers who noticed her wandering by herself directed her to police officer Lior Ohayon, who was stationed nearby.
“Where are my parents? Where are my brothers and sisters?” she asked him. Ohayon lifted her so she could see over the heads of passengers standing in a long line and asked whether she recognized anyone from her family. The girl scanned the crowd, then began to cry.
At first, the officer assumed her parents were nearby and had perhaps moved on to another part of the duty-free area. But the minutes passed and nobody came looking for her.
Ohayon later recalled that the girl was intelligent, articulate and able to explain herself clearly. When officers tried to calm her and offered her ice cream, she replied seriously that her father only allowed her to eat products certified by Badatz, a strict ultra-Orthodox kosher certification.
The officer found her a suitable ice pop and reassured her: “It’s Badatz. You can eat it.” For a brief moment, in the middle of the drama, the ice pop helped.
The girl was taken to the airport police station, where she managed to give officers her parents’ names. An announcement had already been made over the airport public-address system saying that a child had been found, but nobody came to collect her.
Police officer Sarit Ben-Eden entered the parents’ names into the border-control system and was stunned to discover that they were registered as passengers on a flight to Paris.
A race against time began. Ben-Eden picked up the girl and ran with her toward the departure gate while police tried to reach ground staff by phone and have the aircraft stopped. By the time they reached the end of the jet bridge, however, the plane was gone.
The girl understood that something had happened. “Don’t worry,” Ben-Eden told her. “You’ll get to Mom and Dad.”
But at that moment, her parents still had no idea that their daughter had never boarded the flight.
Airport Border Control commander Amnon Shmueli contacted Sun D’Or representatives. Airline officials initially struggled to believe the report as well. The captain was informed and asked to determine whether the girl’s parents were indeed aboard the aircraft and whether they knew where their daughter was.
The plane had already been in the air for about 40 minutes when crew members approached the mother, who was seated near the front with two of her children, and asked where her daughter was.
At first, she was calm, certain the girl was sitting with her father toward the rear of the aircraft. “She’s with her father in the back,” the mother said.
Flight attendants hurried to the father. He, too, was sitting with two children and believed the other three were with their mother.
It took several long seconds to explain what had happened. Both parents stood up in the aisle in shock as crew members tried to calm them, explaining that their daughter had been found, was safe and was being cared for. “How did this happen?” the father repeatedly asked.
According to members of the flight crew, the parents were initially almost unable to speak. Only after receiving the full details and understanding that their daughter was in police custody did they return to their seats.
Back at Ben Gurion Airport, officials were already arranging the next stage. The girl was placed on an El Al flight to Paris, accompanied throughout the journey by a staff member. Her parents were instructed to remain at Charles de Gaulle Airport after landing and wait for her, while El Al personnel in Paris met them upon their arrival.
About two hours later, the girl’s flight landed. She was escorted off the aircraft and reunited with her parents. Passengers who had traveled with her said she appeared lost throughout the journey, a small child aboard a plane filled with strangers, making her way toward a family that was already waiting for her in another country.
The family’s trip to Paris finally ended with an emotional reunion at the French airport.
Alongside the relief that the girl had been found safe and unharmed, the incident left a series of troubling questions. How did only six passengers board after seven boarding passes had been handed over? Why did no member of the ground crew notice that a child had been left behind? And how did an entire family take off without either parent making sure that all five children were with them?
The commander of Ben Gurion Airport Police announced that when the parents returned to Israel, they would be detained for questioning on suspicion of neglecting a helpless minor.
No investigation was initially opened against the airline, but Sun D’Or and the Israel Airports Authority said they would conduct internal inquiries into the handling of the incident and boarding procedures. Sun D’Or’s CEO described it as an extremely rare failure and announced a broad review involving all relevant parties.
But beyond the procedures, boarding passes and investigations, one image remained impossible to forget: a small girl standing alone in the middle of the airport, clutching a police officer’s leg and asking the simplest question in the world: “Where are Mom and Dad?”