The child also grabbs dinner after stealing another passenger's bag

Oct 7, 2013 09:08 GMT  ·  By
Boy gets on plane with no ticket at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport
   Boy gets on plane with no ticket at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport

A 9-year-old boy managed to sneak onto a flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas, without grabbing anyone's attention.

The unnamed young passenger flew out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport on a Delta plane, WUSA 9 reports.

The unlikely passenger landed in Las Vegas on Delta Flight 1651, where he was discovered. He was detected right after the plane reached Nevada.

Apparently, he also spent Wednesday at the airport, stole another passenger’s bag and used whatever money he found there to order lunch at a restaurant.

Airport spokesperson Pat Hogan describes that the airline and the TSA are investigating the incident.

“He had to pass three levels of security,” air travel expert Terry Trippler explains.

“You have the TSA, the gate agents, and the flight crew and a child comes through without even a seat assignment,” he adds.

New York Daily News informs that he has gotten onto the train by arriving at Terminal 1 on a light-rail car.

He has been allowed entry without a boarding pass, since the rules do not state that child passengers require screening.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police spokesman Bill Cassell tells ABC News that the boy is "more worldly than most nine-year-old kids."

However, airport spokesman Patrick Hogan expresses worry about the lack of proper security at St. Paul International.

“The fact that the child’s actions weren’t detected until he was in flight is concerning. More than 33 million people travel through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport every year, and I don’t know of another instance in my 13 years at the airport in which anything similar has happened.

“Fortunately, the flight crew took appropriate actions to ensure the child’s safety, so the story does have a good ending. [...] If it hadn’t been for alert airline employees on our end, he probably never would have been discovered,” he notes.