POLICE are investigating how a 12-year-old boy with neither a passport nor a boarding pass was able to walk on to an international flight at Gatwick at a time when security staff were supposed to be on high alert.

The child, who had run away from a care home, boarded a plane bound for Portugal early on Monday, even though security had been raised amid fears of a terrorist attack.

Sussex Police said that they were concerned by the security breach. BAA Gatwick said that it was treating the incident “extremely seriously”.

The boy, who cannot be named, had left his care home in Merseyside without permission and travelled to London, unaccompanied, on a train.

He made his way to Gatwick, arriving on Monday morning. The child went to the airport’s south terminal and was somehow able to pass through passport control and the full security screening process without anyone realising that he had no travel documents.

At 6am, he joined a queue of passengers who were boarding the Monarch Airlines flight ZB784 to Lisbon.

When he reached the plane a senior member of the cabin crew noticed that the boy had no boarding pass.

He was led to a seat and handed drinks and a snack while airline staff carried out urgent checks to find out whether he was travelling with any members of his family.

After establishing that the boy was alone, the crew member immediately contacted the police and BAA Gatwick’s security team. Two police officers boarded the plane and led the boy off. He was held in custody at a police station before being returned to the care home.

The boy, from Penrith, in Cumbria, is known to have run away from the care home on previous occasions, once travelling as far as Devon. His mother, who cannot be named, said that she was stunned to discover that her son had been allowed to board the plane.

“My worry is that if you have terrorists in these airports they could be looking round for someone who is vulnerable and could get them to take things on the planes for them,” she said.

“What happened is frightening, especially given the state of alert we are supposed to be on at the moment. I want to know how on earth he was able to get through to the plane.”

The runaway’s step-father said: “There’s supposed to be a state of alert to stop al-Qaeda terrorists, and yet a boy of 12 can walk through one of our busiest airports, straight on to a plane, without any documents.”

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