Runaway travelled in high style

Press, 17 November 1982, Page 1

Runaway travelled in high style

Special correspondent When it came to running away from home, a nine-year-old Christchurch boy decided to do it in style. Not for him his worldly goods tied up in a handkerchief and trudging off along a long and lonely road to freedom — he went by aeroplane from Christchurch to Rotorua.

Disgruntled with life’s giving him a hard time, particularly at school, he yesterday went the short distance from his Russley school to Christchurch Airport and boarded a Mount Cook Line flight for. Rotorua. When asked for his ticket the late-boarding passenger, in school uniform, told the stewardess that his mother had put it in his schoolbag for safe-keeping. It was never checked and the boy arrived at Rotorua “in style.” ■ Senior-Sergeant A. N. Hep-

burn, of the Rotorua police, said the first sign of trouble came when the boy aroused suspicion at Rotorua airport. He had been wandering about the airport attracting attention for some time before the police were called at 4 p.m. “He reckoned he had been having a bit of a hard time at school,” said SeniorSergeant Hepburn, “so he just climbed on board the plane." "By the time the confidence trickster touched down at Rotorua Airport he had not again been asked for his ticket, his tale of its being in his bag for safe-keeping apparently having satisfied the stewardess," said SeniorSergeant Hepburn. The boy was last night being looked after by the Social Welfare Department at Rotorua, and plans were being made to fly him back to Christchurch today, on a

Mount Cook flight — as a fare-paying passenger. The boy’s father said last evening: “We have been very worried, of course, but I would rather not talk about it until we have spoken to him tomorrow.”

Mr P. S. Phillips, the Mount Cook line’s managing director, said he had not been told of the incident, but he would ask “a. few hard questions” about how the airline’s sytem had been beaten by the boy, “These are the sorts of things that happen. Even the best system in the world has flaws,” said Mr Phillips, However, he was sure that the Mount Cook Line had taken good care of the boy, and his parents would certainly not be charged for the flight. “Nevertheless, we are a private enterprise organisation aimed at making a profit, and we do not want too much of this going on.”