The boys, ages eight and seven, who are from Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland, some 40 miles from the airport, took a bus to the second city after school, police told THE STAR.

Montego Bay's top cop, Superintendent Steve McGregor, said the boys entered the airport through a dead end and somehow managed to get on the airstrip. "They said they heard the plane and followed the sound because they wanted to go abroad," Supt. McGregor told THE STAR. "I personally spoke to their parents and told them they were lucky we didn't arrest them because they can't leave two little boys alone like that."

The boys, one of whom told police he wanted to be a pilot, told officers that they asked a woman to put them on a bus to Montego Bay after leaving school. They exited the bus at the Montego Bay Transportation Centre and, following the sounds of the planes, walked to an area known as 'Dead End' at the rear of the airport. They then walked around a wall and climbed over a fence to get on the runway.

Police said shortly after 5 p.m. a pilot, turning to make a take-off, saw the boys and apparently radioed the tower who sent for them to be picked up, but not before the boys began running after and beckoning to at least two planes. They were blown to the ground twice by the two aircrafts, police said.

"The airport's authorities need to secure the place more," an officer who spoke to the boys said, "If kids can get on to the airport property then anyone can get on there and do anything and it could cause some serious problems."

When the police contacted their colleagues at the Savanna-la-Mar Police Station, the boys' mothers had already made missing person reports. The parents were taken to Montego Bay where they were questioned and released with their children.

Efforts to speak to a representative from the Airports Authority of Jamaica proved unsuccessful yesterday.