Mum sues JetBlue airlines after they put her little boy, 5, on the WRONG flight… and even presented her with a different child
Maribel Martinez is suing the airline after the bungle that sent her little boy more than 200 miles from his intended destination
A MUM has filed a lawsuit against JetBlue Airways for mixing up her 5-year-old son with another boy and flying him to the wrong city.
Maribel Martinez said she suffered "great emotional distress, extreme fear, horror, mental shock, mental anguish and psychological trauma" when she went to meet her son at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, on August 17 and he wasn't on it.
The little boy, Andy Martinez, had been mistakenly put on a flight to Boston's Logan Airport instead of the flight to Kennedy.
According to the court papers, staff from JetBlue at Logan escorted Andy to a woman he had never seen before and told him he was being reunited with his mother.
Meanwhile, a boy who was supposed to be on the flight to Boston had been put on Andy's New York-bound flight and was presented to Martinez.
It took three hours for JetBlue to sort out what had happened and put the mother and son on the phone with each other, the lawsuit charges.
Both boys had flown out of Cibao International Airport in the Dominican Republic. The boy who was flown to New York instead of Boston has not been publicly identified.
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The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. Martinez's attorney, Sanford Rubenstein, said she also hopes to shine a light on JetBlue's practices and prevent such a mix-up from happening again.
Martinez was waiting for her young son to return to New York after a visit to family in the Dominican Republic when airport staff tried to hand over the wrong child.
The mother immediately feared the worst, telling the airport staff: “This is not my child!”
Speaking about the ordeal later, she said: “I thought he was kidnapped. I thought I would never see him again.”
The mother, who had paid an extra $100 to have her son cared for by JetBlue workers while on the flight, told US media that she had been left “freaking out” after losing her son.
It took three hours for airline staff to find Andy.
She said: “I was freaking out. I didn’t know if he was alive. I still haven’t stopped crying.”
After a tense several hours, the desperate mother was finally able to speak to her son on the phone.
She said her little boy told her: “Mami, they put me on another plane.”
Both children were eventually returned to their intended destinations.
JetBlue has refunded the mother the $475 for the flight, also giving the family $2100 in credit for future flights.
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