Twice during the holiday travel season, young people flying solo on their way to family ended up very far from their intended destinations. One was a 6-year-old flying Spirit Airlines, who, despite always being in the care of an airline employee, ended up in Orlando instead of Fort Myers, Fla., as his grandmother was expecting.

The other was a 16-year-old flying unaccompanied from Tampa to Cleveland yet ended up in Puerto Rico. That one was Frontier Airlines. According to the boy’s father, his son ended up on the wrong flight because there were two flights leaving from the same gate, and Frontier employees did not scan the boy’s boarding pass. They simply glanced at it and then assured him he was boarding the correct plane.

“He went up there and asked the lady if the flight was boarding, and they said, ‘yes,’ and they also checked his bag to make sure it fit,” Ryan Lose told CNN. “But Logan said they never scanned his ticket. Logan said they just glanced at it and said, ‘Yes, you’re on the right flight,’ and then he boarded.”

(To be fair, as of this writing the airline has not responded to whether the father’s assertion is accurate.)

Both incidents are frightening — terrifying for the families. But they should be of wider concern because they are indications the last line of vigilance at our airports is faltering. It appears protocol is not being followed and employees are getting careless.

Is it a matter of employees being stretched thin and burned out? Have airlines slipped in keeping up their training? Spirit told ABC News it is “reiterating our procedures to the team.”

Every airline should take the mistakes as a signal to do more than reiterate. Employees must receive whatever refresher training is necessary, of course. But it must be made clear such lapses are simply unacceptable — not just for the safety of individual young passengers, but of all passengers.