'Catch Me If You Can' boy aged just NINE, walks through airport security and flies to Las Vegas without a ticket after stealing bag and conning free meal in departures

• Boy took Delta flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas on Thursday morning
  
• He passed three levels of checks before flight crew got suspicious mid-air
• Minneapolis official says 'rare incident' is an issue for the airline and TSA 
  
• Nine-year-old was spotted on airport security camera the previous day 
  
• Was filmed stealing bag and even left terminal restaurant without paying

A nine-year-old boy got through airport security and onto a plane without a ticket, it emerged last night.

Security officials at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport screened the boy, whose exploits echo the Leonardo DiCaprio film Catch Me If You Can, at the airport shortly after 10.30am on Thursday.

But the unidentified child from Minneapolis, Minnesota, slipped through a security checkpoint and then boarded Delta Air Lines Flight 1651 - which left for Las Vegas, Nevada, at 11.15am.

Leaving: A 9-year-old runaway passed through this security checkpoint at Minneapolis airport without a ticket

The flight crew became suspicious and contacted Las Vegas police, who met the boy upon landing and gave him to child protection services, a Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman said.

A security video also showed the boy at the airport terminal on Wednesday, the day before his trip, officials said.

He took a bag from the carousel that did not belong to him and ordered lunch at a restaurant outside of the security checkpoints, MAC spokesman Patrick Hogan said.

The owner of the bag was identified and the bag was returned to him, Mr Hogan said. At this point, this is a Delta and [Transport Security Administration] issue,' he added. 'This is a rare incident.'

In a statement to Minneapolis TV station KARE-11, Delta officials said: 'We are investigating the incident and cooperating with the agencies involved.'

Leaving: The runaway boy flew to Las Vegas from Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport on a Delta plane like this one, pictured. It was only discovered mid-air that he had no ticket

KARE-11 reported that authorities believe the nine-year-old boy is a runaway from the Twin Cities.

'He had to pass three levels of security,' said Terry Trippler, an air travel expert with ThePlaneRules.com, to the TV station.

'You have the TSA, the gate agents, and the flight crew and a child comes through without even a seat assignment.'

Mr Tippler said that security introduced after 9/11 obviously still has major flaws. 'While we are safer in the air, this proves there are still gaping holes,' he added.

According to a surveillance video, at 10.37am, the unaccompanied boy arrived at the airport on a southbound light-rail car, the New York Daily News reported.

The boy was then screened at Terminal 1 and granted access to its nine airlines despite appearing to have never produced a required ticket.

Destination: Las Vegas McCarran International Airport, with the 'Strip' in the background. The nine-year-old flew here from Minneapolis without a ticket

In an apparently well-thought out plan that has similarities to the Steve Spielberg-directed movie, at one point the boy is believed to have blended in with another family traveling through the airport to evade detection.

The boy's parents told Minneapolis Police they 'hadn’t seen much of him today' when officers arrived at the missing child's residence on Thursday after he was reported having run away, according to CBS Minneapolis.

Catch Me If You Can was based on the real-life exploits of Frank Abagnale, a teenage con-artist who, among many other scams, traveled the world posing as a Pan Am pilot.

'The fact that the child's actions weren't detected until he was in flight is concerning,' said Mr Hogan, who added that producing identification for children is not a requirement of travel.

'More than 33million people travel through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport every year and I don't know of another instance in my 13 years at the airport in which anything similar has happened.

Comparison: Leonardo DiCaprio (centre) starred in Catch Me If You Can, a film based on the true story of Frank Abagnale, who posed as a Pan Am pilot. The movie echoes the Minneapolis runaway who flew to Las Vegas

'Fortunately, the flight crew took appropriate actions to ensure the child's safety, so the story does have a good ending,' Mr Hogan said.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police spokesman Bill Cassell told ABC News the boy was 'more worldly than most nine-year-old kids.'

'He was able to get onto an airline where he didn't have a ticket and made it five states across the U.S.,' Mr Cassell said. 'If it hadn't been for alert airline employees on our end, he probably never would have been discovered.'

The station reported that Las Vegas police, Hennepin County authorities and the boy's parents were working together.

A statement on the TSA's website said that the federal funding shutdown meant no information on the incident would be immediately available online.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2446673/Runaway-boy-flies-L...