Summary
United Airlines apologized to Melissa Sotomayor after crew members tried to make her remove her son’s ventilator during a March 8 flight from Tampa to Newark.
Sotomayor, whose 2-year-old son relies on a ventilator and tracheostomy tube, said staff demanded the equipment be stowed for takeoff despite prior medical clearance.
A third flight attendant claimed the child would “be OK” without it. The captain called her “difficult” and said the equipment was a safety risk.
Sotomayor expressed feeling humiliated and vowed never to fly United again.
Actually, the crew should have taken one look when her kid was pre-boarded with that equipment and politely changed them to seats where it could be used safely, before they got all settled and before boarding the rest of the plane.
I haven’t had the need to use pre-boarding before, but usually I see flight attendants pretty busy with tasks as passengers are boarding.
I think we both agree the original screw up is the United Reservation folks that approved these passengers for seats they couldn’t be eligible for because of the needed equipment. Its also possible that United Reservation folks may not have marked the paperwork that the equipment was required for the kid to live. So the flight crew may have thought the mom was trying to leverage the situation to get behavior she didn’t need. I still maintain the mom did all the prep work properly and this was a fault on United.
I’ve used pre-boarding a lot, because my husband is quadriplegic, and especially when we also had two small children. There was always at least an offer of assistance from the crew, although I did the lifting and transferring and wheelchair-stowing myself. But it’s been a lot of years since we’ve flown at all, because planes have become even more inaccessible. They’re exempt from the ADA so it’s hard to change anything.
Thats good info. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Exactly. It shouldn’t have even been an issue, because the crew is supposed to make sure the passengers sitting in the exit rows are able and willing to actually pop the hatches open in the event of an evacuation.
During an evacuation, plane rows are too crowded for attendants to be able to get to the doors and open them. Know how you’re stuck in the plane waiting for everyone to de-board after the flight? Attendants have to deal with that when evacuating. So the passengers need to be the ones to actually pop the hatches and start clearing the plane.