BOSTON -- Airlines sometimes send luggage to the wrong city, but one airline sent a child to the wrong state, WCVB-TV reported.

Jonathan Kamens left his daughter Miriam, 10, at Logan International Airport with Continental Airlines employees. He had walked her all the way to the gate and watched her walk through the doors to her plane.

But while she flew safely to Newark, N.J., she was taken to the wrong city. Her grandparents were waiting for her in Cleveland.

"I realized she was missing when I got a phone call from my father-in-law saying, 'Where's Miriam?'" Kamens said.

He assumed she'd gotten on a plane to Cleveland, where her grandparents would pick her up. She didn't make it.

"For 45 minutes I was panic-stricken. I didn't know where my daughter was," Kamens said.

She turned up in Newark. An unaccompanied minor, Miriam was escorted by an airline employee to the wrong plane. Her paperwork hadn't been checked.

"The flight crew on the Cleveland flight was supposed to check that they had the right number of passengers, and they didn't do that," Kamens said. "The number of people who must have failed to do what they're supposed to do is mind-boggling."

A spokeswoman for Continental confirmed there were two flights departing simultaneously from a single doorway and miscommunication among staff resulted in Miriam boarding the wrong aircraft.

"We are truly sorry for this error and have apologized to the family. The child was supervised throughout the entire process and was rebooked and routed to the proper destination on the same day," the airline said in a statement.

The airline has offered to refund the $75 fee the family paid for an unaccompanied minor.

"You can bet they'll be refunding a lot more than that fee by the time I'm done with them. My father-in-law laughed when they made the offer, it was so outrageous," said Kamens.