An airline apologized to a mom after letting her unaccompanied 11-year-old get off a plane alone

• Norwegian apologized to a mom whose daughter was allowed to get off a plane without a staff member.
• The parent paid for its unaccompanied minor service but the child was allowed to roam the airport.

Norwegian Air has apologized to the mother of an 11-year-old child who traveled using its unaccompanied minor service and was allowed to get off the plane without adult supervision.

Pia Kelly, 50, told Insider that her daughter, who was flying from Denmark to Rome to see her father on August 25, disembarked from the plane and walked through the airport with no supervision.

"I was absolutely horrified when I found out and was thankful she hadn't disappeared into the night," she said.

Kelly, from Odense in Denmark, said her daughter was told by a flight attendant that someone would meet her in the terminal and take her to meet her father, but no one turned up.

Kelly said she made contact with the airline twice, but did not get a response until November 4. Insider has viewed the emails she sent.

Norwegian Air told Insider that the flight was operated by another "wetleased" airline, which it briefly used during the summer months. Norwegian said it had apologized to Kelly directly and offered a full refund of the fee charged for the unaccompanied minor.

Kelly said her child was "luckily" with her two siblings, who were not required to use the unaccompanied minor service as they were aged 14 and 15. She said they were told by a flight attendant to wait until everyone else had disembarked before getting off the plane and that someone would be there to guide them.

"No one was there so they hung around for around 15 minutes and tried to get back to the plane but couldn't. Between them they went off and found their luggage and went out and contacted their dad and found him in arrivals," Kelly said.

Norwegian Air told Insider:"When you send your minor on a Norwegian aircraft you should be able to rest assured that good care will be taken of your child. We take pride in providing the highest level of service and work hard to ensure that our own staff and representatives from external handling agents acting on our behalf are qualified to meet our customers' expectations."

The spokesperson added: "Because of what seems to have been a miscommunication between the flight attendant on the arriving flight and the ground handling agent, which meant that the ground handling agent did not help the child through the airport, we did not live up to that in this case. We deeply regret that and offer our sincerest apologies to the parent and the child for what must have been a very frustrating experience."