A four-year-old Israeli girl was left behind at the airport as her mother, father and four siblings rushed to catch a flight to Paris.

The ultra-Orthodox family of seven, who between them had 18 suitcases, were in a hurry not to miss their flight from Ben Gurion international airport at Tel Aviv, and in their haste failed to notice that only six of them had actually boarded the plane.

The girl was found crying and wandering around the departures hall, a massive circular area with dozens of stores and eateries.

Sagit Ben-Eden, a policewoman, noticed the girl and stopped to interview her. After obtaining her surname and checking flight records they ascertained that the parents had boarded a San Dor flight to Paris an hour earlier.

“I saw a little girl in tears. She was looking for her parents,” Ms Ben-Eden said.

“Luckily she was able to give me her name. I grabbed her and ran to the gates but it was too late (because the plane had just taken off)."

As the aircraft gained height, the girl’s parents suffered the crushing embarrassment of being tannoyed by the pilot of the plane to inform them that their family was one short. They had apparently still not realised.

Superintendent Amnon Shmueli, commander of the airport's Passport Control said: "I've been on this job for many years, but I've never seen someone forget their child at the airport. I've seen people return to collect forgotten equipment, but such an incident never happened before."

The incident was a reminder of the 1990 US box office hit Home Alone, in which a little boy is accidentally left alone as his family rush to the airport and fly to Paris for a Christmas holiday.

Unlike the movie, there was a happy ending for the little girl who was able to join her parents. She was flown to Paris on the next flight out, accompanied by a flight attendant.

The forgetful parents will be questioned by the authorities upon their return home and may be charged with negligence, police said.

The girl's grandmother, who took the family to the airport from their home in the northern town of Afula, said: "I simply don't know how this happened to them. We're in shock. They're very responsible and organised, top-notch people. Apparently each one relied on the other and this is what happened."

The incident comes a few days after an eight-year-old boy traveling alone from Ben Gurion got on an El Al flight to Brussels instead of Munich, where his grandparents were waiting for him. Two weeks before that, a 10-year-old boy was left at Ben-Gurion airport while the rest of his group got on a Turkish Airline flight to Copenhagen.

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