Kid books $2300 Qantas flights without parents realising

A travel-mad boy gave his parents a huge shock when he used their credit card to book flights from Adelaide to Rio de Janeiro.

A travel-obsessed kid gave his parents a shock when he bought $2300 in Qantas fares from Adelaide to Rio de Janeiro using their old mobile phone.

The Sunday Star-Times reported the autistic 13-year-old boy, from New Zealand, booked the $NZ2400 flights through Webjet on the hand-me-down phone, which his parents didn’t realise still had their credit card details loaded on.

The boy’s dad said the first he knew of it was when he got an email from Webjet confirming the flights from Adelaide to Rio — but at first, he thought it was a scam.

“When we discovered it was real my heart started to flutter, and I ended up on the phone to Qantas and Webjet trying to sort it out all weekend,” he told the Sunday Star-Times.

“He (the boy) has always been interested in travel and often talks about travelling. We think what’s happened is he’s seen a Webjet ad on TV while my wife was making tea in the kitchen.

Qantas has refunded the family after the enthusiastic boy’s spending spree. Picture: AAP/Bianca De Marchi

“He’s then gone to their website and gone through the whole process.”

The dad explained he didn’t think to restore factory settings on the phone when he gave it to his son to use on Wi-Fi about six months ago. This meant when his son made the booking, the credit card details were already pre-loaded into the payment page.

All his son had to do was add the three-digit verification number.

“We are always wary he doesn’t watch us, but obviously he must have seen us use the code at some point,” the dad said.

“The credit card company say the onus is on us to be safer with our details. They couldn’t reverse the transaction because they say it wasn’t fraudulent use.”

The dad cancelled the booking but was told he’d still need to pay cancellation fees.

“I explained that he was a minor and on the autism spectrum, but there was not much response to that,” he said.

The boy had booked flights from Adelaide to Rio.

Qantas has since agreed to waive cancellation fees so the family was able to get a full refund.

It’s not the first time a child has made headlines for booking flights on their parents’ credit card.

In a sensational case last year, a 12-year-old Australian boy brazenly booked a flight to Bali using his mum’s stolen credit card and managed to stay for a few days on the holiday island before he was caught.

The boy, identified as Drew, flew with Jetstar from Sydney to Perth, and then boarded an international flight to Bali’s Denpasar airport, after two unsuccessful attempts to fly with Qantas and Garuda Airlines.

Once in Bali, the 12-year-old managed to check into a hotel, hire and ride a scooter and drink beer on the beach while his parents back in Sydney searched desperately for him.

After being reunited with his parents, Drew told media he was grounded “until they let me out”.