12-yr-old without passport or ticket boards plane

Red-faced security officials at Gatwick Airport are this morning trying to explain how a 12-year-old managed to board a plane without a ticket or passport. The boy, who ran away from a care home in Merseyside, got on to a Monarch plane bound for Lisbon and was happily sitting down waiting for take-off when the air stewards realised he shouldn't be on board.

Both security and local police were informed, but officials insisted that they were: 'confident that there was no threat to passengers, staff or the aircraft at any time.

'I do find it perfectly flabbergasting not that he could get through one bit of the security but that he could get through the whole lot,' said Ann Widdecombe, 'including boarding the plane itself before anyone discovered that he hadn't got a passport, hadn't got a ticket, hadn't got a boarding pass, hadn't got an anything. It would be amazing any time and any place but in the present climate that really is amazing.'

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