Air accident investigators today recommended Ryanair review procedures after a three-year-old child fell on to the tarmac while boarding a plane.
The child, Olga, escaped with minor injuries after falling through the gap between the handrail and the platform at the top of the Boeing 737's boarding steps at Stansted airport.
She had climbed the stairs unassisted as her mother, Sasha Slater, a journalist, was carrying her 18-month-old son, Joe, with one hand and luggage with the other.
When Olga reached the top of the stairs, "she turned towards her mother, leaned backwards and fell through the gap between the extendable handrail and the top of the airstairs," a report by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch said today.
After receiving initial medical assistance, Olga was airlifted to hospital and discharged 24 hours later.
The AAIB recommended that Ryanair review its passenger boarding and disembarkation procedures "so that assistance is made available to passengers accompanied by children and those with special needs".
The report into the incident, on 17 July last year, said: "The gap between the extendable handrail and the upper platform of the Boeing 737 airstairs represents a hazard to small children boarding or disembarking the aircraft."
The AAIB said there had been four previously reported similar incidents involving small children and this had led to American aviation authorities issuing a special airworthiness information bulletin; the amendment of the Boeing 737 flight attendant manual and the release of two special safety bulletins.
The AAIB said it was making the safety recommendation to Boeing about the airstairs design as the special bulletins "do not provide physical protection against a child falling through the gap".
Also, the AAIB said modification proposed by Ryanair after last summer's incident provided "only a limited physical protection against falling".
In May this year, Ms Slater wrote about the incident in the London Evening Standard.
She described how Olga had "suddenly screamed and slid off the side of the platform", landing on her side on the tarmac.
Slater said: "I thrust Joe into the arms of an air hostess and ran down to reach my daughter who was lying, screaming, beneath the plane. I was forcibly prevented from holding her by one of the many doctors on the flight in case she'd broken her back.
"The next few hours passed in a blur of paramedics, sedatives, stretchers, helicopters and ambulances, brain scans and x-rays. But a day later she was running around in hospital, the only visible signs of injury some scuffing on her toes and knees, a sore neck, and an egg on her forehead."