- A mother says her 12-year-old son was prevented from boarding a flight due to an airline mix-up.
- The flight was a code-share between Qantas and Emirates with a stopover.
Australian airline Qantas has apologized for providing incorrect advice after a mother said her 12-year-old son was prevented from boarding a flight due to him being unaccompanied.
Clare Mooney told New Zealand publication the NZ Herald that her son, Charlie Read, had been booked on a flight from Auckland to Bangkok by a Qantas booking agent. The boy had been planning to visit his father.
Money said the flight was a code-share between Qantas and Emirates with a stopover and change of carrier in Sydney, per the NZ Herald.
After the pair arrived at the airport, Qantas said it could not be responsible for an unaccompanied minor from the stopover in Sydney to Bangkok because Emirates was responsible for this part of the flight, the outlet reported.
Per the report, Read's father, who made the booking, said he had originally been assured that the code-sharing wouldn't be an issue.
Clare Mooney could not immediately be reached for comment.
A spokesperson for Qantas told Insider: "We know this would have been a very frustrating experience and we have apologized to the Read family for providing incorrect advice."
While the flights were Qantas-operated, the flight numbers were Emirates, the airline said, and the family should not have been told they were allowed to use Qantas' unaccompanied minor service.
Qantas added that the family would be reimbursed for their expenses.
Emirates did not immediately reply to Insider's request for comment.
Mooney told the NZ Herald that Qantas airline staff "found issues rather than solutions from the get-go."
Mooney said she was originally told her son could not board because of issues with his vaccination certificate. Staff later said this wasn't the case and her son instead couldn't board because the flight was a code-share with Emirates.
The family said they paid an adult fare for their son and an extra fee for him to be looked after as an unaccompanied minor, per the NZ Herald.
Mooney also told the outlet that Qantas would not let her son board the flight unaccompanied, despite both Qantas and Emirates websites stating that young passengers 12 years and over could do so.
This is not the first time airlines have faced issues over their unaccompanied minor policies.
Last month, Southwest Airlines diverted a flight with an eight-year-old unaccompanied minor on board but failed to let her family know, Insider reported.