Sea search for boy left behind in France

A big air, sea and land search was launched yesterday after emergency services feared that a schoolboy had fallen off a cross-Channel ferry - only for them to discover that the 13-year-old had been left behind in France.

A big air, sea and land search was launched yesterday after emergency services feared that a schoolboy had fallen off a cross-Channel ferry - only for them to discover that the 13-year-old had been left behind in France.

Three helicopters, a spotter aircraft, a lifeboat, a tug and dozens of police officers spent more than four hours searching for the boy from Birmingham.

His teachers only realised that he was missing from the school trip after the ferry from Calais arrived in Dover yesterday morning. The emergency services feared he might have fallen into the Channel and set up a search that cost tens of thousands of pounds.

The police also tracked down 23 coaches that had made the overnight crossing in case the missing boy had boarded the wrong vehicle. But he was later found hundreds of miles away in the French city of Lyons.

Four teachers had been bringing back 44 pupils from Sir Wilfred Martineau School in Shard End, Birmingham, after a week-long trip to Barcelona. The Foreign Office said the boy had become separated from the group at 1am on the outskirts of Lyons, where their coach had made a stop, and he was taken into local police care. Meanwhile, the school group continued and took the P&O Stena Line ferry, which left Calais at 6.30am French time. His teachers only noticed his absence after the party arrived at Dover docks at 7.47am.

Unaware that he was in police care in Lyons, the Maritime Coastguard Agency worked on the theory that the boy might have got on the wrong coach when the ferry docked. The air-sea search was also launched in case he had fallen overboard.

A spokesman for the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Dover said: "The whole operation would have cost tens of thousands of pounds. It's very unfortunate."

A statement from Birmingham City Council said: "The headteacher of the school, in conjunction with the [local education authority], has launched an immediate investigation into the circumstances of the incident."

Last night, the boy was reunited with his parents.