Two unaccompanied children were bumped off an overloaded Wellington to Sydney Qantas flight and sent to Auckland instead.
Victoria Read, of Martinborough, has complained to the airline after her children William, 11, and Beatrice, 8, were stopped from boarding their trans-Tasman flight on Sunday.
Even though Qantas had
been told the children were travelling unaccompanied, they lost their seats, she told the Dominion Post.
About seven or eight passengers were offloaded from the flight because the plane was too heavy, a Qantas spokeswoman confirmed.
Ms Read said the children had to wait 90 minutes for a flight to Auckland and then another hour for a later flight to Sydney, where they were met by their father.
Ms Read said she had arranged for her sister to drop off the children at Wellington airport.
"My sister made it clear that there were two unaccompanied children coming on the flight," she said.
Though Qantas staff had looked after the children in Auckland, no airline should bump unaccompanied children off a flight and send them to a different airport, she said.
A Qantas spokesman said it was not policy to offload children travelling on their own: "If we had been aware of it, we would not have offloaded them."
The tickets had been booked on the internet, the spokesman said, and there was no indication the children were travelling alone.
- NZPA
