Manhattan mother Maribel Martinez is filing a lawsuit against JetBlue Airways following a travel mix up involving her 5-year-old son, Andy. The boy, who is traveling as an unaccompanied minor, was supposed to arrive from the Dominican Republic to the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York last Aug. 17, where his mother was waiting for him. However, Andy ended up at the Logan Airport in Boston instead.
ABC News reports that upon Andy's arrival to the U.S., he was escorted by a JetBlue staff to his "mom" in Boston, while Maribel was presented with a boy who wasn't her son at the New York airport. Three hours later, JetBlue was able to sort out the mix up but by then, the boys and their parents have experienced emotional anguish.
Maribel Martinez started to think about the worst, fearing that her son might have been kidnapped by human traffickers. It's for this reason that the mom is suing the airline for "great emotional distress, extreme fear, horror, mental shock, mental anguish and psychological trauma."
JetBlue has apparently offered Maribel Martinez a $10,000 gift certificate, which was promptly rejected. The mom said that she also received a call from a female JetBlue executive only in September, when the story about her son's travel mix up figured in the headlines.
"She apologized for what happened and said she was a mother, too, and felt bad about what happened," Martinez told Gothamist the account of what the JetBlue call was about. She also revealed that the airline has offered her family a refund and additional credit lines but they are not likely to patronize JetBlue ever again.
"Any parent can understand the terrifying fear a mother goes through knowing that her child is missing," Maribel's attorney, Sanford Rubenstein, told the press, via the New York Times. JetBlue has not given an official statement into the incident but the company is handling an internal investigation, as per the order from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
