Authorities have revealed that a two-year-old toddler was lost from his mother’s sight at Newark Liberty International Airport and was swept away on a luggage conveyor belt in a scary trip.
The horrifying situation adds to the troubling incidents that have plagued the travel hub.
According to a Pix 11 report, the toddler climbed onto the ankle-high conveyor belt where passengers drop off their luggage before takeoff, at a time when his mother was busy rebooking a flight with a JetBlue employee in Terminal A last Wednesday.
RELATED STORIES
The kid rode on the belt, and it carried him away and dropped down a chute into the luggage screening area on the lower level of the terminal.
Two nearby Port Authority officers heard what happened and quickly took to the scene to track the toddler down, said Port Authority Police PBA President Frank Conti to Pix 11.
“The two cops were able to move fast into the system, which was vital,” Conti told the news station. “There was a split in the belts. One officer went toward one direction, one toward the other direction.”
One of the officers found the toddler near an X-ray machine unharmed and lifted him before he went into it.
After being swept away on a luggage conveyor belt, the toddler was brought to safety and his family then flew to Tampa, Florida for a vacation after the nerve-wracking ordeal, yet the news coming out of the beleaguered airport in the last months has been far from positive.
According to The Post, Newark Airport has been described as a “delay-plagued hellhole” for a slew of problems, including unprecedented backups on the tarmac, a glut of cancellations, the possible spread of infectious disease, ongoing construction, FAA controllers walking off the job and terrifying blackouts of its control towers.
The situation at the international travel hub got out of hand to the extent that one federal air safety employee warned the public not to fly out of the embattled airport, insisting that it’s “not safe.”
About a month ago on April 28, air traffic controllers were reportedly left without radar and communications for 90 horrifying seconds, leading to a domino effect that delayed thousands of flights.
At least five air traffic controllers took a 45-day trauma leave due to the scare, as a similar blackout happened last November.
About a fortnight ago, New Jersey health officials warned about a potential measles outbreak when an infected individual traveled through the airport’s Terminal B.
“I don’t see a near-term immediate everything gets better [solution],” ex-Federal Aviation Administration Safety Team Kyle Bailey told The Post.
“They simply need to permanently reduce daily flights into the airport, permanently combined with using bigger planes.” “So there is not a silver bullet,” he added.
