A mother from New Jersey said that the flight crew on board a recent United Airlines flight instructed her to remove her child’s ventilator and tracheostomy tube and to stow the medical equipment so the flight could take off.
Melissa Sotomayor shared on TikTok that she was told by airline employees that she would have to remove her 21-month-old son’s breathing devices before a March 9 flight between Tampa, Florida, and Newark, New Jersey.
She said on the social media platform, “This message is for United Airlines. The way that you treated my son when we were attempting to fly home from Tampa to Newark was absolutely ridiculous.”
Sotomayor’s son is, according to his mother, “medically complex” and was born at 22 weeks gestation.
She said she had a medical clearance and documentation from her son’s doctors and the airline that said he could fly and that there were no issues on the flight to Florida from New Jersey.
Sotomayor said that a flight attendant told her to take him off the devices, but that the mother told the attendant that she couldn’t because “they are keeping him alive,” handing over the paperwork. A second flight attendant then allegedly told Sotomayor that if she refused they may have to move their seats. She told the flight attendant that United’s accessibility department placed them in those seats before the flight.
The airline said the flight attendants called it a “bulk head seating problem,” but Sotomayor claims they didn’t say that when they were instructing her to remove the devices.
A third flight attendant allegedly told her that her son would be “OK until we’re in the air at a high enough altitude” without the equipment. She refused and a nearby passenger stepped in.
The captain however said that Sotomayor was “being difficult,” and despite her showing him the documentation, claimed that she was breaking Federal Aviation Administration rules and putting other passengers at risk.
“I was really upset by the way we were humiliated in front of others in the way we were talked to,” Sotomayor said in the video. “The captain talked to me as if I was purposely endangering my son, and they were unwilling to listen to the fact that my son was dependent on this equipment to keep him alive.”
The flight took off an hour late.
United Airlines said it contacted Sotomayor after the flight “to address her concerns and apologized for any frustration she may have experienced.” But Sotomayor said that the apology she received “was not sincere.”
In addition to the ventilator and tracheostomy, she said her son also has vision problems, hearing problems and a gastrostomy tube.
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